Bourne was deeply disturbed, but he chose to keep the feeling to himself. "All right. Let's hear the details."

"At 17:32 local time, six days ago, Martin and the five-man team of Skorpion One choppered onto the upper reaches of the northern slope of Ras Dejen." Lerner pa.s.sed over a sheet of onionskin. "Here are the exact coordinates."

The DCI said, "Ras Dejen is the highest peak in the Simien Range. You've been there. Better yet, you speak the language of the local tribespeople."

Lerner continued. "At 18:04 local time, we lost radio contact with Skorpion One. At 10:06 AM Eastern Standard Time, I ordered Skorpion Two to those coordinates." He took the sheet of onionskin back from Bourne. "At 10:46 EST today, we got a signal from Ken Jeffries, the commander of Skorpion Two. The unit found the burned-out wreckage of the Chinook on a small plateau at the correct coordinates."

"That was the last communication we had from Skorpion Two," the DCI said. "Since then, nothing from Lindros or anyone else in the party."

"Skorpion Three is stationed in Djibouti and ready to go," Lerner said, neatly sidestepping the Old Man's look of disgust.

But Bourne, ignoring Lerner, was turning over possibilities in his mind, which helped him put aside his anxiety regarding his friend's fate. "One of two things has happened," he said firmly. "Either Martin is dead or he's been captured and is undergoing articulated interrogation. Clearly, a team is not the way."

"The Skorpion units are made up of some of our best and brightest field agents-battle-hardened in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq," Lerner pointed out. "You'll need their firepower, believe me."

"The firepower of two Skorpion units couldn't handle the situation on Ras Dejen. I go in alone, or not at all."

His point was clear, but the new DDCI wasn't buying it. "Where you see 'flexibility,' Bourne, the organization sees irresponsibility, unacceptable danger to those around you."

"Listen, you called me in here. You're asking a favor of me."

"Fine, forget Skorpion Three," the Old Man said. "I know you work alone."

Lerner closed the file. "In return, you'll get all the intel, all the transportation and support you need."

The DCI took a step toward Bourne. "I know you won't pa.s.s up the chance to go after your friend."

"In that you're right." Bourne walked calmly to the door. "Do whatever the h.e.l.l you want with the people you command. For myself, I'm going after Martin without your help."

"Wait." The Old Man's voice rang out in the huge office. There was a note to it like a whistle on a train pa.s.sing through a dark and deserted landscape. Sadness and cynicism venomously mixed.

"Wait, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Bourne took his time turning around.

The DCI glared at him with a bitter enmity. "How Martin gets along with you is a G.o.dd.a.m.n mystery." Hands clenched behind his back, he strode in full military fashion to the window, stood staring out at the immaculate lawn and, beyond, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He turned back and fixed Bourne in his implacable gaze. "Your arrogance disgusts me."

Bourne met his gaze mutely.

"All right, no leash," the DCI snapped. He was shaking with barely suppressed rage. "Lerner will see that you have everything you need. But I'm telling you, you'd d.a.m.n well better bring Martin Lindros home."

Three.

LERNER LED BOURNE out of the DCI's suite, down the hall, into his own office. Lerner sat down behind his desk. When he realized that Bourne had chosen to stand, he leaned back.

"What I'm about to tell you cannot under any circ.u.mstances leave this room. The Old Man has named Martin director of a black-ops agency code-named Typhon, dealing exclusively with countering Muslim extremist terrorist groups."

Bourne recalled that Typhon was a name out of Greek mythology: the fearsome hundred-headed father of the deadly Hydra. "We already have a Counterterrorist Center."

"CTC knows nothing about Typhon," Lerner said. "In fact, even inside CI, knowledge of it is on a strict need-to-know basis."

"So Typhon is a double-blind black op."

Lerner nodded. "I know what you're thinking: that we haven't had anything like this since Treadstone. But there are compelling reasons. Aspects of Typhon are-shall we say-extremely controversial, so far as powerful reactionary elements within the administration and Congress are concerned."

He pursed his lips. "I'll cut to the chase. Lindros has constructed Typhon from the ground up. It's not a division, it's an agency unto itself. Lindros insisted that he be free of administrative red tape. Also, it's by necessity worldwide-he's already staffed up in London, Paris, Istanbul, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and three locations in the Horn of Africa. And it's Martin's intention to infiltrate terrorist cells in order to destroy the networks from the inside out."

"Infiltration," Bourne said. So that's what Martin had meant when he'd told Bourne that save for the director, he was completely alone inside CI. "That's the holy grail of counterterrorism, but so far no one's been able to even come close."

"Because they have few Muslims and even fewer Arabists working for them. In all of the FBI, only thirty-three out of twelve thousand have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of those works in the sections of the bureau that investigate terrorism within our borders. With good reason. Leading members of the administration are still reluctant to use Muslims and Western Arabists-they're simply not trusted."

"Stupid and shortsighted," Bourne said.

"But these people exist, and Lindros has been quietly recruiting them." Lerner stood up. "So much for orientation. Your next stop, I believe, will be Typhon ops itself."

Because it was a double-blind counterterrorist agency, Typhon was down in the depths. The CI building sub-bas.e.m.e.nt had been recast and remodeled by a construction firm whose every worker had been extensively vetted even before they had been made to sign a confidentiality agreement that would a.s.sure them a twenty-year term in a federal maximum-security facility if they were foolish or greedy enough to break their silence. The supplies that had been filling up the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt had been exiled to an annex.

On his way out of the DCI's office, Bourne briefly stopped by Anne Held's domain. Armed with the names of the two case officers who had eavesdropped on the conversation that had sent Martin Lindros halfway around the world on the trail of transshipped TSGs, he took the private elevator that shuttled between the DCI's floor and the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt.

As the elevator sighed to a stop, an LCD panel on the left-hand door activated, an electronic eye scanning the shiny black octagon Anne had affixed to the lapel of his jacket. It was encoded with a number invisible save to the scanner. Only then did the steel doors slide open.

Martin Lindros had reimagined the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt as, basically, one gigantic s.p.a.ce filled with mobile workstations, each with a braid of electronic leads spiraling up to the ceiling. The braids were on tracks so they could move with the workstations and the personnel as they relocated from a.s.signment to a.s.signment. At the far end, Bourne saw, was a series of conference rooms, separated from the main s.p.a.ce by alternating frosted-gla.s.s and steel panels.

As befitted an agency named after a monster with two hundred eyes, the Typhon office was filled with monitors. In fact, the walls were a mosaic of flat-panel plasma screens on which a dizzying array of digital images were displayed: satellite chartings, closed-circuit television pictures of public s.p.a.ces, transportation hubs such as airports, bus depots, train stations, street corners, cross sections of snaking highways and suburban rail lines, metropolitan underground platforms worldwide-Bourne recognized metros in New York, London, Paris, Moscow. People of all shapes, sizes, religions, ethnicities walking, milling mindlessly, standing undecided, lounging, smoking, getting on and off conveyances, talking to one another, ignoring one another, plugged into iPods, shopping, eating on the run, kissing, cuddling, exchanging bitter words, oblivious, cell phones slapped to their ears, accessing e-mail or p.o.r.no, slouched, hunched, drunk, stoned, fights breaking out, first-date embarra.s.sments, skulking, mumbling to themselves. A chaos of unedited video from which the a.n.a.lysts were required to find specific patterns, digital omens, electronic warning signs.

Lerner must have alerted the case officers to his arrival, because he saw a striking young woman whom he judged to be in her midthirties detach herself from a view screen and come toward him. He at once knew that she was or had been, at any rate, a field agent. Her stride was not too long, not too short, not too fast, not too slow. It was, to sum it up in one word, anonymous. Because an individual's stride was as distinctive as his fingerprints, it was one of the best ways to cull an adversary out of a swarming pack of pedestrians, even one whose disguise was otherwise first-rate.

She had a face that was both strong and proud, the chiseled prow of a sleek ship knifing through seas that would capsize inferior vessels. The large, deep blue eyes were set like jewels in the cinnamon dusk of her Arabian face.

"You must be Soraya Moore," he said, "the senior case officer."

Her smile showed for a moment, then was quickly hidden behind a cloud of confusion and abrupt coolness. "That's right, Mr. Bourne. This way."

She led him down the length of the vast, teeming s.p.a.ce to the second conference room from the left. Opening the frosted-gla.s.s door, she watched him pa.s.s with that same odd curiosity. But then considering his often adversarial relationship with CI, perhaps it wasn't odd after all.

There was a man inside, younger than Soraya by at least several years. He was of middling height, athletic, with sandy hair and a fair complexion. He was sitting at an oval gla.s.s conference table working on a laptop. The screen was filled with what looked to be an exceptionally difficult crossword puzzle.

He glanced up only when Soraya cleared her throat.

"Tim Hytner," he said without rising, When Bourne took a seat between the two case officers, he discovered that the crossword Hytner was trying to solve was, in fact, a cipher-and quite a sophisticated one at that.

"I have just over five hours until my flight to London departs," Bourne said. "Triggered spark gaps-tell me what I need to know."

"Along with fissionable material, TSGs are among the most highly restricted items in the world," Hytner began. "To be precise, they're number two thousand six hundred forty-one on the government's controlled list."

"So the tip that got Lindros so excited he couldn't help going into the field himself concerned a transshipment of TSGs."

Hytner was back to trying to crack the cipher, so Soraya took over. "The whole thing began in South Africa. Cape Town, to be exact."

"Why Cape Town?" Bourne asked.

"During the apartheid era, the country became a haven for smugglers, mostly by necessity." Soraya spoke quickly, efficiently, but with an unmistakable detachment. "Now that South Africa is on our 'white list,' it's okay for American manufacturers to export TSGs there."

"Then they get 'lost,'" Hytner chimed in without lifting his head from the letters on the screen.

"Lost is right." Soraya nodded. "Smugglers are more difficult to eradicate than roaches. As you can imagine, there's still a network of them operating out of Cape Town, and these days they're highly sophisticated."

"And the tip came from where?" Bourne said.

Without looking at him, Soraya pa.s.sed over sheets of computer printouts. "The smugglers communicate by cell phone. They use 'burners,' cheap phones available in any convenience store on pay-as-you-go plans. They use them for anywhere from a day to, maybe, a week, if they can get their hands on another SIM card. Then they throw them away and use another."

"Virtually impossible to trace, you wouldn't believe." Hytner's body was tense. He was putting all he had into breaking the cipher. "But there is a way."

"There's always a way," Bourne said.

"Especially if your uncle works in the phone company." Hytner shot a quick grin at Soraya.

She maintained her icy demeanor. "Uncle Kingsley emigrated to Cape Town thirty years ago. London was too grim for him, he said. He needed a place that was still full of promise." She shrugged. "Anyway, we got lucky. We caught a conversation regarding this particular shipment-the transcript is on the second sheet. He's telling one of his people the cargo can't go through the usual channels."

Bourne noticed Hytner looking at him curiously. "And what was special about this 'lost' shipment," Bourne said, "was that it coincided with the specific threat to the U.S."

"That and the fact that we have the smuggler in custody," Hytner said.

Bourne ran his finger down the second page of the transcript. "Was it wise to bring him in?

Chances are you'll alert his customer."

Soraya shook her head. "Not likely. These people use a source once, then they move on."

"So you know who bought the TSGs."

"Let's say we have a strong suspicion. That's why Lindros went into the field himself."

"Have you heard of Dujja?" Hytner said.

Bourne accessed the memory. "Dujja has been credited with at least a dozen attacks in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the most recent being last month's bombing that killed ninety-five people at the Grand Mosque in Khanaqin, 144 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. If I remember right, it was also allegedly responsible for the a.s.sa.s.sinations of two members of the Saudi royal family, the Jordanian foreign minister, and the Iraqi chief of internal security."

Soraya took back the transcript. "It sounds implausible, doesn't it, that one cadre could be responsible for so many attacks? But it's true. One thing links them all: the Saudis. There was a secret business meeting going on in the mosque that included high-level Saudi emissaries. The Jordanian foreign minister was a personal friend of the royal family; the Iraqi security chief was a vocal supporter of the United States."

"I'm familiar with the cla.s.sified debrief material," Bourne said. "Those were all sophisticated, highly engineered attacks. Most of them didn't include suicide bombers, and none of the perpetrators has been caught. Who's the leader of Dujja?"

Soraya put the transcript back in its folder. "His name is Fadi."

"Fadi. The redeemer, in Arabic," Bourne said. "A name he must have taken."

"The truth is we don't know anything else about him, not even his real name," Hytner said sourly.

"But we do know some things," Bourne said. "For one, Dujja's attacks are so well coordinated and sophisticated, it's safe to a.s.sume that Fadi either has been educated in the West or has had considerable contact with it. For another, the cadre is unusually well armed with modern-day weaponry not normally a.s.sociated with Arab or Muslim fundamentalist terror groups."

Soraya nodded. "We're all over that angle. Dujja is one of the new generation of cadres that has joined forces with organized crime, drug traffickers out of South Asia and Latin America."

"If you ask me," Hytner chipped in, "the reason Deputy Director Lindros got the Old Man to approve Typhon so quickly was that he told him our first directive is to find out who Fadi is, flush him out, and terminate him." He glanced up. "Each year, Dujja's become stronger and more influential among Muslim extremists. Our intel indicates that they're flocking to Fadi in unprecedented numbers."

"Still, as of today no agency has been able to get to first base, not even us," Soraya said.

"But then, we've only recently been organized," Hytner added.

"Have you contacted the Saudi secret service?" Bourne asked.

Soraya gave him a bitter laugh. "One of our informants swears the Saudi secret service is pursuing a lead on Dujja. The Saudis deny it."

Hytner looked up. "They also deny their oil reserves are drying up."

Soraya closed her files, stacked them neatly. "I know there are people in the field who call you the Chameleon because of your legendary skill at disguising yourself. But Fadi-whoever he is-is a true chameleon. Though we have corroborating intel that he not only plans the attacks but is also actively involved in many of them, we have no photo of him."

"Not even an Identi-Kit drawing," Hytner said with evident disgust.

Bourne frowned. "What makes you think Dujja bought the TSGs from the supplier?"

"We know he's holding back vital information." Hytner pointed to the screen of his laptop. "We found this cipher on one of the b.u.t.tons of his shirt. Dujja is the only terrorist cadre we know of that uses ciphers of this level of sophistication."

"I want to interrogate him."

"Soraya's the AIC-the agent in charge," Hytner said. "You'll have to ask her."

Bourne turned to her.

Soraya hesitated only a moment. Then she stood and gestured toward the door. "Shall we?"

Bourne rose. "Tim, make a hard copy of the cipher, give us fifteen, then come find us."

Hytner glanced up, squinting as if Bourne were in a glare. "I won't be near finished in fifteen minutes."

"Yes, you will." Bourne opened the door. "At least, you'll sell it that way."

The holding cells were accessed via a short, steep flight of perforated steel stairs. In stark contrast with Typhon's light-drenched ops room, the s.p.a.ce here was small, dark, cramped, as if the bedrock of Washington itself were reluctant to give up any more of its domain.

Bourne stopped her at the bottom of the stairs. "Have I done something to offend you?"

Soraya stared at him for a moment as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. "His name is Hiram Cevik," she said, pointedly ignoring Bourne's question. "Fifty-one, married, three children. He's of Turkish descent, moved to Ukraine when he was eighteen. He's been in Cape Town for the last twenty-three years. Owns an import-export firm. For the most part, the business is legit, but every once in a while, it seems, Mr. Cevik gets a whole other thing going." She shrugged. "Maybe his mistress has a taste for diamonds, maybe it's his Internet gambling."