"And then what?"

"It depends on what I find," Dr. Sunderland said. "But the treatment will involve stimulating certain synapses in the brain with specific complex proteins." He peered down at Bourne. "Miniaturization is the key, you see. That's one of my specialties. You cannot work with proteins, on that minuscule level, without being an expert in miniaturization. You've heard of nanotechnology?"

Bourne nodded. "Manufactured electronic bits of microscopic size. In effect, tiny computers."

"Precisely." Dr. Sunderland's eyes gleamed. He appeared very pleased by the scope of his patient's knowledge. "These complex proteins-these neurotransmitters-act just like nanosites, binding and strengthening synapses in areas of your brain to which I will direct them, to block or make memories."

All at once Bourne ripped off the electronic leads, rose, and, without a word, bolted out of the office. He half ran down the marble-clad hall, his shoes making small clicking sounds as if a many-legged animal were pursuing him. What was he doing, allowing someone to tinker with his brain?

The two bathroom doors stood side by side. Hauling open the door that said MEN, he rushed inside, stood with his arms rigid on either side of the white porcelain sink. There was his face, pallid, ghostly in the mirror. He saw reflected the tiles behind him, so like those in the funeral home. He saw Marie-lying still, hands crossed on her flat, athlete's belly. She floated as if on a barge, as if on a swift river, taking her away from him.

He pressed his forehead against the mirror. The floodgates opened, tears welled up in his eyes, rolled freely down his cheeks. He remembered Marie as she had been, her hair floating in the wind, the skin at the nape of her neck like satin; when they'd whitewater-rafted down the Snake River, her strong, sun-browned arms digging the paddle into the churning water, the big Western sky reflected in her eyes; when he'd asked her to marry him, on the stolid granite grounds of Georgetown University, she in a black spaghetti-strap dress beneath a Canadian shearling coat, holding hands, laughing on the way to a faculty Christmas party; when they'd said their vows, the sun sliding behind the jagged snowcapped peaks of the Canadian Rockies, their newly ringed hands linked, their lips pressed together, their hearts beating as one. He remembered when she'd given birth to Alison. Two days before Halloween, she was sitting at the sewing machine, making a ghost pirate costume for Jamie, when her water broke. Alison's birth was hard and long. At the end, Marie had begun to bleed. He'd almost lost her then, holding on tight, willing her not to leave him. Now he had lost her forever...

He found himself sobbing, unable to stop. And then, like a ghoul haunting him, the unknown woman's b.l.o.o.d.y face once again rose from the depths of his memory to blot out his beloved Marie. Blood dripped. Her eyes stared sightlessly up at him. What did she want? Why was she haunting him? He gripped his temples in despair and moaned. He desperately wanted to leave this floor, this building, but he knew he couldn't. Not like this, not being a.s.saulted by his own brain.

Dr. Sunderland was waiting with pursed lips, patient as stone, in his office. "Shall I?"

Bourne, the b.l.o.o.d.y face still clogging his senses, took a breath and nodded. "Go ahead."

He sat in the chair, and Dr. Sunderland reattached the leads. He flipped a switch on the movable cart and began to ramp up dials, some quickly, others slowly, almost gingerly.

"Don't be apprehensive," Dr. Sunderland said gently. "You will feel nothing at all."

Bourne didn't.

When Dr. Sunderland was satisfied, he threw another switch and a long sheet of paper much like the one used in a EEG machine came rolling out of a slot. The doctor peered at the printout of Bourne's waking brain waves.

He made no notations on the printout but nodded to himself, his brow roiled like an oncoming thunderhead. Bourne could not tell whether any of this was a good sign or a bad one.

"All right then," Dr. Sunderland said at length. He switched off the machine, rolled the cart away, and replaced it with the second one.

From a tray on its gleaming metal top he picked up a syringe. Bourne could see that it was already loaded with a clear liquid.

Dr. Sunderland turned to Bourne. "The shot won't put you all the way out, just into a deep sleep-delta waves, the slowest brain waves." In response to the practiced movement of the doctor's thumb, a bit of the liquid squirted out the end of the needle. "I need to see if there are any unusual breaks in your delta wave patterns."

Bourne nodded, and awoke as if no time had pa.s.sed.

"How do you feel?" Dr. Sunderland asked.

"Better, I think," Bourne said.

"Good." Dr. Sunderland showed him a printout. "As I suspected, there was an anomaly in your delta wave pattern." He pointed. "Here, you see? And again here." He handed Bourne a second printout. "Now here is your delta wave pattern after the treatment. The anomaly is vastly diminished. Judging by the evidence, it is reasonable to a.s.sume that your flashbacks will disappear altogether over the course of the next ten or so days. Though I have to warn you there's a good chance they might get worse over the next forty-eight hours, the time it takes for your synapses to adjust to the treatment."

The short winter twilight was skidding toward night when Bourne exited the doctor's building, a large Greek Revival limestone structure on K Street. An icy wind off the Potomac, smelling of phosphorus and rot, whipped the flaps of his overcoat around his shins.

Turning away from a bitter swirl of dust and grit, he saw his reflection in a flower shop window, a bright spray of flowers displayed behind the gla.s.s, so like the flowers at Marie's funeral.

Then, just to his right, the bra.s.s-clad door to the shop opened and someone exited, a gaily wrapped bouquet in her arms. He smelled... what was it, wafting out from the bouquet? Gardenias, yes. That was a spray of gardenias carefully wrapped against winter's chill.

Now, in his mind's eye, he carried the woman from his unknown past in his arms, felt her blood warm and pulsing on his forearms. She was younger than he had a.s.sumed, in her early twenties, no more. Her lips moved, sending a shiver down his spine. She was still alive! Her eyes sought his. Blood leaked out of her half-open mouth. And words, clotted, distorted. He strained to hear her. What was she saying? Was she trying to tell him something? Who was she?

With another gust of gritty wind, he returned to the chill Washington twilight. The horrific image had vanished. Had the scent of the gardenias summoned her from inside him? Was there a connection?

He turned around, about to go back to Dr. Sunderland, even though he had been warned that in the short run he might still be tormented. His cell phone buzzed. For a moment, he considered ignoring it. Then he flipped open the phone, put it to his ear.

He was surprised to discover that it was Anne Held, the DCI's a.s.sistant. He formed a mental picture of a tall, slim brunette in her middle twenties, with cla.s.sic features, rosebud lips, and icy gray eyes.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Bourne. The DCI wishes to see you." Her accent was Middle Atlantic, meaning that it lay somewhere between her British birthplace and her adopted American home.

"I have no wish to see him," Bourne responded coldly.

Anne Held sighed, clearly steeling herself. "Mr. Bourne, next to Martin Lindros himself n.o.body knows your antagonistic relationship with the Old Man-with CI in general-better than I do. G.o.d knows you have ample cause: They've used you countless times as a stalking horse, and then they were sure you'd turned rogue on them. But you really must come in now."

"Eloquently said. But all the eloquence in the world won't sway me. If the DCI has something to say to me, he can do it through Martin."

"It's Martin Lindros the Old Man needs to talk to you about."

Bourne realized he was holding the phone with a death grip. His voice was ice cold when he said: "What about Martin?"

"That's just it. I don't know. No one knows but the Old Man. He's been closeted in Signals since before lunchtime. Even I haven't seen him. Three minutes ago, he called me and ordered me to have you brought in."

"That's how he put it?"

"His precise words were, 'I know how close Bourne and Lindros are. That's why I need him.' Mr. Bourne, I implore you, come in. It's Code Mesa here."

Code Mesa was CI-speak for a Level One emergency.

While Bourne waited for the taxi he'd called, he had time to think about Martin Lindros.

How many times in the past three years had he spoken of the intimate, often painful subject of his memory loss with Martin. Lindros, the deputy director of CI-the least likely confidant. Who would have expected him to become Jason Bourne's friend? Not Bourne himself, who had found his suspicion and paranoia coming to the fore when Lindros had shown up at Webb's campus office nearly three years ago. Surely, Bourne had figured, he was there to once more try to recruit Bourne into CI. It wasn't such an odd notion. After all, Lindros was using his newfound power to reshape CI into a leaner, cleaner organization with the expertise to take on the worldwide threats that radical, fundamentalist Islam presented.

Such a change would have been all but unthinkable five years ago, when the Old Man ruled CI with an iron hand. But now the DCI truly was an old man-in reality as well as in name. Rumors swirled that he was losing his grip; that it was time for him to retire honorably before he was fired. Bourne would wish this were so, but chances were that these particular rumors had been started by the Old Man himself to flush out the enemies he knew were hiding in the Beltway brush. He was a wily old b.a.s.t.a.r.d, better connected to the old-boy network that was the bedrock of Washington than anyone else Bourne had ever come across.

The red-and-white taxi pulled to a halt at the curb; Bourne got in and gave an address to the driver. Settling himself into the backseat, his thoughts returned inward.

To his complete surprise, the subject of recruitment had never come up in the conversation. Over dinner, Bourne began to get to know Lindros in an entirely different way from their time in the field together. The very fact of his changing CI from the inside had turned him into a loner within his own organization. He had the absolute, unshakable trust of the Old Man, who saw in Lindros something of his own younger self, but the head of the seven directorates feared him because he held their futures in the palm of his hand.

Lindros had a girlfriend named Moira, but otherwise had no one close to him. And he had a particular empathy for Bourne's situation. "You can't remember your life," he had said over that first of many dinners. "I have no life to remember..."

Perhaps what drew them unconsciously was the deep, abiding damage each of them had suffered. From their mutual incompleteness came friendship and trust.

Finally, a week ago, he'd taken a medical leave from Georgetown. He'd called Lindros, but his friend was unavailable. No one would tell him where Lindros was. Bourne missed his friend's careful, rational a.n.a.lysis of Bourne's increasingly irrational state of mind. And now his friend was at the center of a mystery that had caused CI to go into emergency lockdown mode.

The moment Costin Veintrop-the man who called himself Dr. Sunderland-received confirmation that Jason Bourne had, indeed, left the building, he neatly and rapidly packed his equipment into the gusseted outside compartment of a black leather briefcase. From one of the two main sections he produced a laptop computer, which he fired up. This was no ordinary laptop; Veintrop, a specialist in miniaturization, an adjunct to his study of human memory, had customized it himself. Plugging a high-definition digital camera into the Firewire port, he brought up four photo enlargements of the laboratory room taken from different angles. Comparing them with the scene in front of him, he went about ensuring that every item was as he had found it when he'd entered the office fifteen minutes before Bourne had arrived. When he was through, he turned off the lights and went into the consult room.

Veintrop took down the photos he'd put up, giving a lingering look at the woman he'd identified as his wife. She was indeed Katya, his Baltic Katya, his wife. His ingenuous sincerity had helped him sell himself to Bourne. Veintrop was a man who believed in verisimilitude. This was why he'd used his a photo of his wife and not a woman unknown to him. When taking on a legend-a new ident.i.ty-he felt it crucial to mix in bits of things he himself believed. Especially with a man of Jason Bourne's expertise. In any event, Katya's photo had had the desired effect on Bourne. Unfortunately, it had also served to remind Veintrop of where she was and why he could not see her. Briefly, his fingers curled, making fists so tight his knuckles went pale.

Abruptly he shook himself. Enough of this morbid self-pity; he had work to do. Placing the laptop on the corner of the real Dr. Sunderland's desk, he brought up enlargements of the digital photos he'd made of this room. As before, he was meticulous in his scrutiny, a.s.suring himself that every single detail of the consult room was as he had found it. It was essential that no trace of his presence remain after he'd left.

His quad-band GSM cell phone buzzed, and he put it to his ear.

"It's done," Veintrop said in Romanian. He could have used Arabic, his employer's native language, but it had been mutually decided that Romanian would be less obtrusive.

"To your satisfaction?" It was a different voice, somewhat deeper and coa.r.s.er than the compelling voice of the man who'd hired him, belonging to someone who was used to exhorting rabid followers.

"Most certainly. I have honed and perfected the procedure on the test subjects you provided for me. Everything contracted for is in place."

"The proof of it will occur shortly." The dominant note of impatience was soured by a faint undertone of anxiety.

"Have faith, my friend," Veintrop said, and broke the connection.

Returning to his work, he packed away his laptop, digital camera, and Firewire connector, then slipped on his tweed overcoat and felt fedora. Grasping his briefcase in one hand, he took one final look around with exacting finality. There was no place for error in the highly specialized work he did.

Satisfied, he flipped the light switch and, in utter darkness, slipped out of the office. In the hallway he glanced at his watch: 4:46 PM. Three minutes over, still well within the time-frame tolerance allotted to him by his employer. It was Tuesday, February 3, as Bourne had said. On Tuesday, Dr. Sunderland had no office hours.

Two.

CI HEADQUARTERS, located on 23rd Street NW, was identified on maps of the city as belonging to the Department of Agriculture. To reinforce the illusion, it was surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns, dotted here and there with ornamental shade trees, divided by snaking gravel paths. The building itself was as nondescript as was possible in a city devoted to the grandeur of monumental Federal architecture. It was bounded to the north by huge structures that housed the State Department and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, and on the east by the National Academy of Sciences. The DCI's office had a sobering view of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as well as a slice of the shining, white Lincoln Memorial.

Anne Held hadn't been exaggerating. Bourne had to go through no less than three separate security checkpoints before he gained admittance to the inner lobby. They took place in the bomb- and fireproof public lobby, which was, in effect, a bunker. Hidden behind decorative marble slabs and columns were half-meter-thick meta-concrete blast walls, reinforced with a mesh of steel rods and Kevlar webbing. There was no gla.s.s to shatter, and the lighting and electrical circuits were heavily shielded. The first checkpoint required him to repeat a code phrase that changed three times a day; at the second he had to submit to a fingerprint scanner. At the third, he put his right eye to the lens of a sinister-looking matte-black machine, which took a photo of his retina and digitally compared it with the photo already on file. This added layer of high-tech security was crucial since it was now possible to fake fingerprints with silicone patches affixed to the pads of the fingers. Bourne ought to know: He'd done it several times.

There was another security check just before the elevator bank, and still another-a jury-rigged affair as per Code Mesa regs-just outside the DCI's suite of offices on the fifth floor.

Once through the thick, steel-plated, rosewood-clad door he saw Anne Held. Uncharacteristically, she was accompanied by a whey-faced man with muscles rippling beneath his suit jacket.

She gave him a small, tight smile. "I saw the DCI a few moments ago. He looks like he's aged ten years."

"I'm not here for him," Bourne said. "Martin Lindros is the only man in CI I care about and trust. Where is he?"

"He's been in the field for the last three weeks, doing G.o.d alone knows what." Anne was dressed in her usual impeccable fashion in a charcoal-gray Armani suit, a fire-red silk blouse, and Manolo Blahniks with three-inch heels. "But I'll wager high money that whatever signals the DCI has received today are what's caused the extraordinary flap around here."

The whey-faced man escorted them wordlessly down one corridor after another-a deliberately bewildering labyrinth through which visitors were led via a different route every time-until they arrived at the door to the DCI's sanctum sanctorum. There his escort stood aside, but did not leave. Another marker of Code Mesa, Bourne thought as he smiled thinly up at the tiny eye of the security camera. A moment later, he heard the electronic lock clicking open remotely.

The DCI stood at the far end of an office as large as a football field. He held a file in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other, defying the building's federally mandated ban. When did he start smoking again? Bourne wondered. Standing beside him was another man-tall, beefy, with a long scowling face, light brush-cut hair, and a dangerous stillness about him.

"Ah, you've come at last." The Old Man strode toward Bourne, the heels of his handmade shoes clicking across the polished wood floor. His shoulders were up around his ears, hunched as if against heavy weather. As he approached, the floodlights from outside illuminated him, the moving images of his past exploits written like soft white explosions across his face.

He looked old and tired, his cheeks fissured like a mountainside, his eyes sunken into their sockets, the flesh beneath them puddled and yellow, a candle burned too low. He jammed the cigarette between his liver-colored lips, underscoring the fact that he would not offer to shake hands.

The other man followed, clearly and deliberately at his own pace.

"Bourne, this is Matthew Lerner, my new deputy director. Lerner, Bourne."

The two men shook hands briefly.

"I thought Martin was DDCI," Bourne said to Lerner, puzzled.

"It's complicated. We-"

"Lerner will brief you following this interview," the Old Man interrupted.

"If there is to be a briefing after this." Bourne frowned, abruptly uneasy. "What about Martin?"

DCI hesitated. The old antipathy was still there-it would never disappear. Bourne knew that and accepted it as gospel. Clearly the current situation was dire enough for the Old Man to do something he'd sworn never to do: ask for Jason Bourne's help. On the other hand, the DCI was the ultimate pragmatist. He'd have to be to keep the director's job for so long. He had become immune to the slings and arrows of difficult and, often, morally ambiguous compromise. This was, simply, the world in which he existed. He needed Bourne now, and he was furious about it.

"Martin Lindros has been missing for almost seven days." All at once the DCI seemed smaller, as if his suit were about to fall off him.

Bourne stood stock-still. No wonder he hadn't heard from Martin. "What the h.e.l.l happened?"

The Old Man lit another cigarette from the glowing end of the first, grinding out the b.u.t.t in a cut-crystal ashtray. His hand shook slightly. "Martin was on a mission to Ethiopia."

"What was he doing in the field?" Bourne asked.

"I asked the same question," Lerner said. "But this was his baby."

"Martin's people have gotten a sudden increase in chatter on particular terrorist frequencies." The DCI pulled smoke deep into his lungs, let it out in a soft hiss. "His a.n.a.lysts are expert at differentiating the real stuff from the disinformation that has counterterrorist divisions at other agencies chasing their tails and crying wolf."

His eyes locked with Bourne's. "He's provided us with credible evidence that the chatter is real, that an attack against one of three major cities in the United States-D.C., New York, L.A.-is imminent. Worse still, this attack involves a nuclear bomb."

The DCI took a package off a nearby sideboard and handed it to Bourne.

Bourne opened it. Inside was a small, oblong metallic object.

"Know what that is?" Lerner spoke as if issuing a challenge.

"It's a triggered spark gap. It's used in industry to switch on tremendously powerful engines." Bourne looked up. "It's also used to trigger nuclear weapons."

"That's right. Especially this one." The DCI's face was grim as he handed Bourne a file marked DEO-Director's Eyes Only. It contained a highly detailed spec sheet on this particular device. "Usually triggered spark gaps use gases-air, argon, oxygen, SF6, or a combination of these-to carry the current. This one uses a solid material."

"It's designed to be used once and once only."

"Correct. That rules out an industrial application."

Bourne rolled the TSG between his fingers. "The only possible use, then, would be in a nuclear device."

"A nuclear device in the hands of terrorists," Lerner said with a dark look.

The DCI took the TSG from Bourne, tapped it with a gnarled forefinger. "Martin was following the trail of an illicit shipment of these TSGs, which led to the mountains of northwestern Ethiopia where he believed they were being transshipped by a terrorist cadre."

"Destination?"

"Unknown," the DCI said.