As she made her way through the exhaustingly clogged city she kept reminding herself of what would be awaiting her when she returned to Jerusalem. By now her father must know she was in Cairo, and why. Ivan Borz. She had history with him. In fact, Ivan Borz was the reason she had come to Cairo five years ago.

As the world's largest arms dealer, he was well known to Mossad, deemed a major threat, and therefore targeted. After three frustrating years trying to find and terminate him, her father had had enough. He sent her to find Ivan Borz and eradicate him. She had been warned that, unlike the majority of Kidon missions, this one was likely to be long-term. She didn't mind; she had nothing going in either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. She was, in fact, bored-the first and most definitely the last time she'd feel any form of tedium.

In the pursuit of her objective she had met an Egyptian money broker. Over the course of a month and a half she gained his trust. He wasn't a bad man, per se, but he was up to his neck in them. Sara should not have had a moment's compunction in using him, nevertheless in one of those moments in time that change everything, a moment you wish you could take back, she had. By one of those astonishing strokes of luck that sometimes happen in the ever-fluid field, he was lending money to one of Borz's two current clients. Which was how she gained knowledge of the site of the gathering between Borz and his clients to consummate an enormous arms deal. Shortly thereafter, the moneylender was found beheaded in his office. Whether it had been Borz or one of the men working for his now-deceased client, Sara never found out. Not that it mattered to the moneylender. Dead is dead. Her larger regret was that she had failed to kill Ivan Borz.

If Eli was disappointed in the outcome of her mission he never mentioned it. Instead, his sole message to her was that Cairo-anywhere in Egypt, for that matter-was off-limits to her until further notice.

Further notice had come to her in the form of the dossier Dov had left on her father's desk. Five years on. And now here she was, back in Cairo. She exited her taxi, walked a mile and a half, turned into a shop selling hijabs. She bought one, wrapped her head, then went into the rear of the shop. An old man with a face the color of a betel nut and as creased as tree bark looked up from his work, smiled as she said, "How is your daughter, Uncle?" in perfect Arabic.

"You mean Sidra?"

"No. Ermina."

His smile widened. "She is well and thriving."

Finished with their recognition parole, the old man rose, beckoned her to follow him down a dimly lit corridor. He opened a locked door, led her into a tiny storeroom lined with shelves on which were piled fabrics he would fashion into stylish hijabs, along with ready-made ones.

Stronger than he appeared, he pulled on one set of shelves, which swung out on massive hinges, and they stepped into a deep alcove. This space, too, contained shelves, but they were piled with weaponry of all kinds.

He stepped back, gestured for her to make her choices.

As always, Sara chose wisely.

26.

As the sun rose Bourne slept in a lumpy bed in a groaning hotel in a seedy neighborhood, while the ancient air-conditioning unit gasped and struggled to mitigate the heat that was only just beginning.

He awoke, showered, and dressed, and was out the door, enduring the blinding glare of sunlight that accompanied the inchoate roar of the city. He had made three calls to the best jeweler shops in the city, hitting pay dirt on the last one.

Across town, he purchased a loupe and a beautiful set of jeweler's tools in a soft velvet-lined case. He paid cash and walked out of the shop. He needed a quiet place-certainly not his hotel room-where he would be undisturbed.

Designed in the neoclassical style by Marcel Dourgnon, the dusky-rose-colored Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, at Tahrir Square, was the first purpose-built museum edifice in the world. In 1902, the thousands of artifact treasures, spanning five thousand years of Egyptian dynastic history, were transferred there from the palace of Ismail Pasha in Giza, where they had been displayed for more than a decade.

Bourne found his way to the museum's library, an oasis of calm and virtually silent. The room was subtly perfumed by the scent of paper and bindings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and possessed an atmosphere he found appropriate for the work at hand. He settled himself at the far end of one of the long refectory tables, near one of the small, green-shaded lamps, and unwrapped his new jeweler's case, then took out the fake Roman coin Boris had sent him. He peered at it through the jeweler's loupe. In the pool of aqueous light cast upon the table, he examined the coin on end. There was the hairline join that circumnavigated the edge.

Choosing a .8 precision screwdriver, the smallest available, he placed the tip against the join, began to carefully apply pressure. At first nothing happened. He applied more pressure, this time from a slight angle. Still nothing. He was just wondering whether the hairline was a join at all, when he felt the tip of the implement sink inward. It was a tiny bit, but it might be enough. He twisted the screwdriver, the tip applied torque to the two sides of the join, and the coin opened like a clam.

Inside he found a piece of onionskin, tightly folded and refolded in upon itself. Taking up a tweezers from his kit, he slowly and carefully opened the bit of onionskin. Little by little, the text Boris had laboriously written revealed itself. Morning mists lifting off a graveyard.

- "This town is just fucking weird," Boris had said, as he and Bourne sat at an outdoor cafe in Jerusalem, drinking strong coffee and eating couscous.

A square of undyed muslin flapped overhead, keeping the scorching sunlight off them. The voices of hawkers were everywhere, and the passing parade of people moved with aggressive, purposeful strides or with the delicacy of deer. It was a clear day four years ago.

"I mean who's going to tell you the truth-Mossad? An Arab? From which sect, from which faction within that sect? The trouble with Israel is that it's controlled by the religious right. Those fanatics have the prime minister and Mossad in their pocket. Everybody falls in line; everybody does what they're told." He shrugged his big, meaty shoulders. "So what are you going to do? Everyone has an axe to grind, and believe me it's an ancient one, buried so deep in their bones even Hercules couldn't wrench it out."

He dug into his couscous with an uncharacteristic fury. "Fuck all organized religion, that's what I say. Think of what the world would be like without any religion."

"We'd all be Communists," Bourne said with a small laugh.

Boris saw no humor in that. "Communism is a dead end, my friend. Does it exist in Russia today? We learned our lesson. In China? They know better. Even Cuba is beginning to see what they've done to themselves. Okay, maybe North Korea, but a sadder, more deluded, more threadbare country never existed in the history of the world."

Boris sat, hunched over, brooding for some minutes. Bourne had seen this mood before, and he was loathe to interrupt it.

"Speaking of the history of the world, I've been working on a private side project. Ever since cyber-spying hacks have become so sophisticated and supercomputers are being used to decode even the most sophisticated ciphers, I've been on a hunt for new ways to communicate securely. The FSB now uses typewriters for all internal memos and project reports. Nothing concerning ongoing projects is on our servers, otherwise GhostNet would be all over us." He meant PLA Unit 61398, the Chinese Army's hacking unit. "But how to communicate to agents in the field? That was the more vexing problem."

He grunted as he called for more coffee. "I thought about this long and hard, then did some research on my own. What I came up with was this: Sumerian."

He sat back as the coffee was set down in front of them. When they were alone again, he segued smoothly from his preface to his thesis. "Sumerian has many unique qualities, not the least of which is that it's riddled with homophones. That, and the fact that there are two branches-the so-called male and female-makes it, in my opinion, a perfect cipher language. You can bunch the glyphs into groups, like looking at Morse code. And, of course there's always the false group hidden somewhere in the message in the event a hostile figures out the cipher key."

He lifted a forefinger as if testing the air for a change in the weather. "So now I will show you the glyphs while I pronounce them in Russian, and, naturally, you will memorize them as I draw them. Finally, we will each write a cipher for the other to decode. A game, if you will. Our kind of game. And like all our games, one with the possibility of deadly consequences. If you're ready, we'll begin." And dipping the tip of a finger into his coffee, he started to draw cuneiform glyphs on the tabletop.

- Twenty-four glyphs, each one representing not a letter, not a word, but a concept, arranged into four groups, written in Boris's own hand, an artifact that seemed to have resurrected him from the dead. It was as if he were sitting across from Bourne now, in the dim antiquity of the museum library.

This was what Bourne was staring at now, written on the unfolded bit of onionskin. Boris had drawn the mixed male and female Sumerian symbols, just as he had four years ago on the cafe's tabletop in Jerusalem. This time, however, they were in a different progression. Boris had left him a cipher.

Now Bourne had hard evidence that his friend had had an intimation of his death. Why else send a courier on an urgent mission to Frankfurt to find Bourne and deliver the coin? Boris could have waited until he saw Bourne at the wedding, but obviously he felt there was no time or he didn't want to chance a direct handoff. He had diligently followed decades of security protocol.

Momentarily overcome with emotion, Bourne looked up at the dusty windows, where light filtered in, so weakly he could have been underwater. The shadows of palm fronds fluttered like sea anemones. Being aboard ship with Boris had always been difficult; the man was continually green about the gills. But instead of griping about it, he made jokes, poked fun at himself. He had a highly developed sense of humor, especially for a Russian. He was like a laughing child with his toys-especially his newest ones, bright and shiny and oh so valuable. For Boris, his secrets were his toys.

"Boris," he whispered under his breath, "what are you trying to tell me?"

- Sara knew she should rendezvous with Lev Bin, the agent in charge of the operation Mossad was mounting against Ivan Borz, but she didn't, for two reasons. First, she didn't like Bin, nor did she entirely trust him. Second, she could hardly believe he would welcome her with open arms.

Now there was a third, far more urgent reason: she had picked up a tail.

Not surprising given her father's intel that she had been made at Sheremetyevo. She thought it safe to assume that the police had turned over the double murder under the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge to the FSB. Finding her on the airport CCTV would connect her, at least in theory, to the murders. They'd want her blood, no question.

Walking at a normal pace, she melted into a group of high-end tourists, with their own bodyguards.

- "This city is a fucking disgrace," the newly minted Colonel Pankin said. He gestured at the uncontrolled shouting, honking, exhaust-pluming chaos that was Cairo. "It's a goddamned hellhole of heathens."

The newly minted General Korsolov raised an eyebrow. "Never having been out of the Federation can be a liability as well as a blessing."

"The Middle East," Pankin said with a whiff of disdain. "My field of expertise has always been Ukraine and the former Soviet States."

"Was," Korsolov said. "With your promotion comes new responsibilities. The Sovereign wants us both to broaden our horizons."

"There she is," Pankin said without pointing, and the two FSB officers moved off after the Kidon assassin they knew only as Rebeka.

"She's with a tour group," Korsolov said. "They're heading for the Mahmoud Mokhtar Museum."

"How d'you know about these things?" Pankin asked.

"Didn't you read the detailed tour guide supplied to us?"

"I was catching up on sleep."

"Don't fuck with me," Korsolov said with a growl of annoyance. "You were basking in the afterglow of your promotion, Colonel." He picked up their pace, as they passed between the monumental square columns of the entrance. "Keep your xenophobia on a tight leash, your eye on the prize. Otherwise, your promotion will be short-lived."

Inside the enormous anteroom was a hushed susurrus, as if swarms of insects rather than people had congregated in the galleries and stone corridors.

"Just so you know," Korsolov said, leading the way toward the periphery of the tour group, "Mokhtar was the father of modern Egyptian sculpture." He put his forefinger against his lips. "No Russian," he whispered. "From this point on only English, yes?"

Pankin nodded. "We should split up."

"Hammer and Tongs, eh?"

"Exactly."

Korsolov nodded his assent, and the two men moved to opposite sides of the tour cluster. Korsolov had spotted the guards right away, and, as a prophylactic against their suspicion, struck up a conversation with a young, affluent couple that looked as if they had just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad. Korsolov swallowed his disgust, put on a welcoming smile, and introduced himself as a professor of Egyptian art. He fed them just enough on Mokhtar for them to accept him as one of their own, and so he passed muster with the guard on his side of the group. They passed a large bas-relief hung on one wall, then two freestanding sculptures Korsolov recalled from his guide, spouted some nonsense that nevertheless fascinated the couple, before he passed on, insinuating himself deeper into the group within which Rebeka had cleverly embedded herself.

He could hear the tour guide now. Some of the group had donned wireless headsets to better hear the commentary, others preferred to listen on their own. Rebeka was one of the latter. Korsolov caught a glimpse of her in profile. He made a sudden move, a disturbance, though minor, that caused a ripple through the group, like a pebble thrown into a pond. Ever on the alert, Rebeka turned in his direction and saw him. This was the point. He was the Hammer; Pankin the Tongs. Rebeka, recognizing danger, began to edge away from him. He continued toward her, ensuring she would keep her distance, ensuring she would run right into Pankin and be caught in the closing jaws of the Tongs.

The knots of people swirled around him. The commentary had reached an end; the group was beginning to break up into family units or cliques, to move on, led by the guide. Korsolov saw Pankin, who was closing in on Rebeka with deadly intent.

- Sara saw her tail-or at least part of it. She had spied two of them-one older, broader, one younger, hatchet-faced. They were FSB; there was no mistaking them. It was impossible for them to keep the swagger out of their gait, just as it was impossible for them to hide their discomfort at being in Cairo. She could tell immediately that these were no field agents. They were high-level officers, and the only reason why such as they would come after her themselves was their mistaken idea that she had killed their boss. They wanted to interrogate her here, in Cairo, then kill her. They had no intention of bringing her back to the Lubyanka.

She wormed her way through the group, as quickly as she was able, but in the back of her mind was the knowledge that there was a second officer. She didn't see him behind her, so he must be in front. They were trying to maneuver her into a pincer-prey trap, and with the swirls of people all around impeding her progress, let alone her escape routes, they had a good chance of succeeding.

27.

What if she knows there are two of us? Colonel Pankin asked himself. He had just caught sight of Rebeka, the group commenced moving to the next exhibit, all was in flux, and he himself was in motion, rushing toward her.

But then he answered his own question: The group that had worked to her advantage was now a major liability, blocking any direct route of escape. They had her between Hammer and Tongs.

Beyond Rebeka, he caught sight of Korsolov, stuck in the corner of his eye like a fleck of soot. He knew no matter what he did now, how instrumental he was in the capture of a Kidon assassin-a monumental achievement-Korsolov would take all the credit. He knew it was the way of things, but he hated it nonetheless. Hammer and Tongs was his idea, and now here she came straight into his arms. He had only to scoop her up, manacle her wrists as Korsolov came up behind her. Then they would discreetly disengage themselves from the group, hustle her out of the museum into a car he would call. He was looking forward to pulling her apart, piece by piece, to her vomiting up all of Kidon's secrets, and then to slitting her throat as she had done to General Karpov.

She was almost upon him, almost close enough, and he began to reach out for her, his fingers stretching to encircle her wrist, when she abruptly lurched to her left, into the chest of one of the guards. She made a moaning sound, let her body go limp.

The guard caught her, rushed her over to a stone bench against one wall. His companion joined him. Pankin heard snatches of their conversation-"passed out...low blood sugar...mouth to mouth? Not necessary...hospital? See if she comes...and bring a car around, anyway..."-before the rest of the group gathered around, curious and concerned, a hubbub brewing louder.

The manufactured incident left Pankin and Korsolov helpless, standing pretty much with their dicks in their hands, effectively locked out of getting to her.

"Bitch!" Pankin said under his breath. "She thinks she's so clever."

"Our pursuit isn't over. It's just begun." Korsolov's eyes burned with hatred. "And when we do get her I will have my fun with her."

"I want a piece of that," Pankin said, but Korsolov was no longer listening.

- The cipher Boris had left for Bourne was, properly enough, giving him fits. Even though he had been put through cipher training at Treadstone, even though he had been through advanced study on his own, he couldn't for the life of him figure out Boris's message. He sat hunched over in the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities' library, while at the other end of the vast room scholars and visitors came and went in hushed reserve. The inner life of ancient Egypt held an almost holy place among archeologists, architects, religious scholars, and mystics-not to mention grave robbers and tomb looters. Their pantheon of animal-headed deities were arbiters of both awe and fear.

No matter how he tried to interpret the cuneiform symbols he could not make of them even a single sentence. With the beginning of a headache deep behind his eyes, he rose, went to the window, looked out across the Giza Plateau toward the distant golden pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. He'd been inside two of them-Menkaure had been closed for some time. He might have been inside, but he couldn't remember-and he'd been fascinated by the hieroglyphics, how they told a story in much the same way a modern rebus did: in pictogram/concept form.

And then, all at once, he swung away from the window, hurried back to his chair and began to look anew at Boris's cipher. Which, he thought excitedly, wasn't really a cipher at all: it was a rebus-Sumerian cuneiform, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, like Mayan pictograms, was a language particularly suited to writing in rebus.

- Sara threw some money at the taxi driver and stepped onto the sidewalk. The guards had escorted her out of the museum and into a waiting taxi, giving instructions to the driver to take his passenger back to the hotel the tour was staying at. Traveling north up the wide Meret Basha Boulevard, Sara abandoned the taxi near the eastern edge of Gabalaya Park. She hurried across Wasim Hasan. Up ahead a pathetically shortened parade of tour buses passed Midan El-Tahreer, where the protest riots had become a symbol of what turned out to be a false and dispiriting Arab Spring. These days, no more than a handful of people were allowed into the square at one time by the military, whose presence was unmistakable. Beyond their myopic gaze rose the aquarium and the Museum of Antiquities.

In the low-key alarm caused by her medical "emergency" no one had bothered to ask her name or to verify that she was, in fact, part of the tour. The guide, who was her only potential enemy, was thankfully busy assuring the rest of the tour that everything was fine, herding their rising panic like a seasoned cattleman.

She held no illusions that she was safe from her FSB tails. What she had managed back at the Mokhtar Museum was simply a holding action. Sooner or later they would track her down and find her. She was not a runner; she had learned that fleeing a dangerous predator only got you pulled down from behind and eaten alive.

As she climbed the stairs to the aquarium, she did not even bother looking behind her. She knew her tails must be there; frankly, she would have been disappointed if she'd lost them so easily. More than that, she wouldn't have believed it. She'd had numerous field engagements with FSB agents, and had found them nothing less than competent, sometimes frighteningly so, especially the ones personally trained by General Karpov himself.

She paid the outrageous entrance fee, kicked away some of the garbage strewn in her path, and went through the filthy interior. The aquarium was one of those Cairo attractions that was so run-down and in need of attention it was a crime to see how the fish were suffering.

But it wasn't the fish she had come to see. She had been inside the aquarium once before, and she knew where she was headed.

- "It's a miracle anything's left alive in here," Pankin said, craning his neck to peer through the dim fug of the aquarium's interior. "They have a fucking nerve charging to get into this pigsty."

"Even our pigs have it better than this," Korsolov said as they passed tanks with cracked glass, mossy green water, semiconscious fish hovering near the bottom, their gills struggling to suck in the oxygen-depleted water.

Pankin laughed. "At least until they're slaughtered."

"At least slaughtering is quick," Pankin said. "This is slow torture."

"Something we both know a bit about."

The two flitted from shadow to shadow. What little light there was came from the tanks, aqueous and sludgy. They were both tinting green, like zombies in a horror movie.

"Where the hell is she going?" Pankin said.

"Away from us. But this time there's no splitting up-she'll expect that."

The darkness continued to descend, as if from the twilight of evening into the black of night. As they entered the next chamber, the walls seemed to narrow, become rough-hewn, as though they had entered a cave. Plus, the rank smell of guano and urine assaulted them with an almost physical blow.

"Kakgo chrta!" Pankin said. What the hell! "Where the fuck are we?"

At that moment, something flew right into his face. He shouted, more in shock than anything else. Then, as he saw the red eyes, the wingspread, and the hideous face he screamed in fear.

"It's a bat!" Korsolov shouted.

"Krme shtok!" No kidding! Pankin drew his weapon and fired at the bat, which wheeled away.