Together they stripped Omar of his uniform, socks, and shoes. Fadi did not forget the man's underwear, putting those on first. The idea was to be absolutely authentic.

"La ilaha ill allah." Muta grinned. "You look every inch the Pakistani servant."

Fadi nodded. "Then it's time."

As he went through the suite, he picked up the tray Omar had brought. Out in the corridor, he took the service elevator to the bas.e.m.e.nt. He drew out a handheld video device, brought up the schematics for the hotel. Locating the room housing the electronic panels for the HVAC, electrical power, and sprinkler systems took less than three minutes. Inside, he removed the cover to the sprinkler panel and replaced the wires for the fifth floor. The color coding would look correct to anyone who checked, but the wires were now shorted out, rendering the fifth-floor sprinklers inoperable.

He returned to the fifth floor the way he had come. Encountering a maid who entered the service lift on the second floor, he tried out his imitation of Omar's voice. She got out on the fourth floor without suspecting a thing.

Returning to the Silvers' suite, he went into the bathroom. From the bottom drawer of his case, he pulled out a small spray can and two metal containers of carbon disulfide. He emptied one container into Omar's accommodating lap, the odor of rotten eggs pervading the air. Back in the living room, he poured out the second just below the window, where the hem of the thick curtains fell. Then he sprayed the curtains with a substance that would turn the fabric from fire-r.e.t.a.r.dant to flammable.

In the sitting room, he said, "Do you have everything you need?"

"I have forgotten nothing, Fadi."

Fadi ducked back into the bathroom and lit the accelerant in Omar's lap. Virtually no trace of him, not a recognizable bone nor a bit of flesh, would survive the intense heat of the inferno the accelerants would generate. With Muta watching, Fadi lit the bottom of the curtains in the living room, and they left the suite together. They parted almost immediately, Muta ibn Aziz to the stairwell, Fadi once again to the service elevator. Two minutes later, he exited the side entrance: Omar on a cigarette break. Forty-three seconds later, Muta joined him.

They had just turned off 20th Street onto H Street, protected by the bulk of one of the buildings at George Washington University, when, with a thunderous roar, the fire blew out the fifth-floor window, on its way to completely incinerating all three rooms of the Silvers' suite.

They strolled down the street to the sounds of shouts, cries, the mounting wail of sirens. A flickering red heat rose into the night, the heartbreaking light of disaster and death.

Both Fadi and Muta ibn Aziz knew it well.

A world away from both luxury and international terrorism, Northeast quadrant was rife with its own homegrown disasters arising from poverty, inner-city rage, and disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt-toxic ingredients of existence so familiar to Fadi and Muta ibn Aziz.

Gangs owned much of the territory; drug- and numbers-running were the commerce that fed the strong, the amoral. Vicious turf wars, drive-by shootings, raging fires were nightly occurrences. There wasn't a foot patrolman on the Metro D.C. Police who would venture onto the streets without armed backup. This held true for the squad cars as well, which were without exception manned by two cops; sometimes, on particularly b.l.o.o.d.y-minded nights or when the moon was full, by three or four.

Bourne and Soraya were racing through the night along these mean streets when he noted for the second time a black Camaro behind them.

"We picked up a tail," he said over his shoulder.

Soraya didn't bother looking back. "It's Typhon."

"How d'you know?"

Over the sighing wind he heard the distinct metallic snik! of a switchblade. Then the edge of the blade was at his throat.

"Pull over," she said in his ear.

"You're crazy. Put the knife away."

She pressed the blade into his skin. "Do as I tell you."

"Don't do this, Soraya."

"You're the one who needs to think about what he's done."

"I don't know what you-"

She gave him a shove in the back with the heel of her hand. "Dammit! Pull over now!"

Obediently, he slowed down. The black Camaro came roaring up on his left to trap him between it and the curb. Soraya noted this with satisfaction and, as she did so, Bourne jammed his thumb into the nerve on the inside of her wrist. Her hand opened involuntarily and he caught the falling switchblade by the handle, closed it, and stuck it into his jacket.

The Camaro, following procedure to the letter, had now angled in to the curb just in front of him. The pa.s.senger door swung open even as it rocked on its shocks, and an armed agent leapt out. Bourne twisted the handlebars and the motorcycle's engine screamed as he turned to his right, cutting across a burned-out lawn, slipping into a narrow alley between two houses.

He could hear shouts behind him, the slamming of a door, the angry roar of the Camaro, but it was no use. The alley was too narrow for the car to be able to follow the motorcycle. It might try to find him on the other side, but Bourne had an answer for that as well. He was intimate with this part of Washington, and he was willing to bet everything that they weren't.

On the other hand, he had Soraya to contend with. He might have stripped her of her knife, but she could still use every part of her body as a weapon. This she did with an economy of movement and an efficiency of application. She dug knuckles into his kidneys, repeatedly slammed her elbow into his ribs, even tried to gouge out an eye with her thumb, in obvious retaliation for what had happened to poor Tim Hytner.

All these a.s.saults Bourne suffered with a grim stoicism, fending her off as best he could while the motorcycle rocketed through the narrow lane between the stained building walls on either side. Garbage cans and pa.s.sed-out drunks were only the most frequent obstacles he had to negotiate at speed.

Then three teens appeared at the end of the alley. Two had baseball bats, which they brandished with chop-licking menace. The third, just behind the others, leveled a Sat.u.r.day-night special at him as the motorcycle neared.

"Hang on!" he shouted at Soraya. Feeling her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, he leaned back, shifting their center of gravity sharply, at the same time gunning the engine. The front end of the motorcycle lifted off the ground. They rushed at the thugs reared up like a lion on the attack. He heard a shot fired, but the underside of the motorcycle protected them. Then they were in the midst of it. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a bat from the grip of the thug on the left, slammed it down onto the wrist of the third teen, and the gun went flying.

They burst out of the end of the alley. Bourne leaned forward, guiding the motorcycle back onto two wheels just in time for the sharp turn to the right, down a street seething with garbage and stray dogs, yelping at the Harley's thunderous pa.s.sage.

Bourne said, "Now we can straighten-"

He never finished. Soraya had locked the crook of her arm across his windpipe and was bringing to bear a lethal pressure.

Five.

d.a.m.n YOU, d.a.m.n you, d.a.m.n you!" Soraya chanted like an exorcist.

Bourne scarcely heard her. He was far too busy trying to stay alive. The motorcycle was hurtling at a hundred kilometers an hour down the street, the wrong way, as it happened. He managed to swerve out of the way of an old Ford, horn blaring, a deep voice shouting obscenities. But in the process he sideswiped a Lincoln idling at the opposite curb. The motorcycle hit, bouncing off the long dented slash in the Continental's front fender. Bourne's windpipe, almost entirely blocked by the choke hold Soraya had on him, was allowing next to no air into his lungs. Stars twinkled at the periphery of his vision, and he was blacking out for microseconds at a time.

Even so, he was aware that the Lincoln had awakened and, making a sharp U-turn, was now in fast pursuit of the motorcyle that had done it damage. Up ahead, a truck lumbered toward him, taking up most of the street.

Putting on a shocking burst of speed, the Continental came abreast of him, its blackened window rolled down and a moon-faced black man scowling and howling a string of curses. Then the voracious snout of a sawed-off shotgun showed itself.

"This'll teach yo, m.u.t.h.af.u.c.ka!"

Before Moon-face had a chance to pull the trigger, Soraya kicked upward with her left leg. The edge of her boot struck the shotgun barrel; it swung wildly upward, the blast exploding into the treetops lining the street. Taking advantage, Bourne twisted the handlebars to full speed and took off down the street directly toward the huge truck. The driver saw their suicide maneuver and panicked, turning the wheel hard over as he simultaneously downshifted and stood on the air brakes. The truck, howling in protest, slewed broadside across the road.

Soraya, seeing death approaching with appalling speed, cried out in Arabic. She relinquished her choke hold to once again swing her arms tight around Bourne's waist.

Bourne coughed, sucked sweet air into his burning lungs, leaned all the way over to his right, cut the engine an instant before they were sure to slam into the truck.

Soraya's scream was cut short. The motorcycle went down on its side in a welter of sparks and blood from skin flayed off Bourne's right leg as they slid between the truck's madly spinning axles.

On the other side Bourne brought the engine to life, using the momentum and the weight of their combined bodies to return the motorcycle to its normal upright position.

Soraya, too dazed to immediately resume her attack, said, "Stop, please stop now."

Bourne ignored her. He knew where he was going.

The DCI was in conference with Matthew Lerner, being debriefed on the particulars of Hiram Cevik's escape and its fiery aftermath.

"Hytner aside," Lerner said, "the damage was light. Two agents with cuts and abrasions-one of those also with a concussion from the blast. A third agent missing. Minor damage to the bird on the ground"-he meant the helicopter-"none to the one that had been hovering."

"That was a public arena," the Old Man said. "It was f.u.c.king amateur hour out there."

"What the h.e.l.l was Bourne thinking, bringing Cevik out into the open?"

The director's gaze rose to the portrait of the president that hung on one wall of the conference room. On the other wall was a portrait of his predecessor. You only get your portrait painted after they've hung you out to dry, he thought sourly. The years had piled up on him, and some days-like today-he could feel every grain of sand in the hourgla.s.s burying him slowly, surely. Atlas with bowed shoulders.

The DCI shuffled through some papers, held one to the light. "The chief of D.C. Metro's called, ditto the FB f.u.c.king I." His eyes bored into Lerner's. "You know what they wanted, Matthew? They wanted to know if they could help. Can you beat that? Well, I can.

"The president phoned to ask what the h.e.l.l was going on, if we were under attack by terrorists, if he should head for Oz." Another name for the Hidden Seat of Power, the secret place from which the president and his staff could run the country during a full-fledged emergency. "I told him everything was under control. Now I'm asking you the same question, and by G.o.d I'd better get the answer I want."

"In the end, we return to Bourne," Lerner said, reading from the hastily prepared research notes his chief of staff had thrust into his fist just moments before the meeting convened. "But then the recent history of CI is riddled with snafus and disasters that somehow always have their origin with Jason Bourne.

"It pains me to say I told you so, but this whole mess could've been avoided had you kept Lindros here at HQ. I know he was once a field operative, but that was some time ago. The animal edge is quickly dulled by administrative concerns. He's got his own shop to run. Who's going to run it if he's dead? The Cevik debacle was the direct result of Typhon being without a head."

"Everything you say is true, dammit. I never should've allowed Martin to talk me into this. Then disaster upon disaster at Ras Dejen. Well, at least this time Bourne won't disappear off the grid."

Lerner shook his head. "But I have to wonder whether that's enough."

"What d'you mean?"

"There's more than a fair chance that Bourne had a hand in Cevik's escape."

The Old Man's eyebrows knit together.

"You have proof of this?"

"I'm working on it," Lerner said. "But it stands to reason. The escape was planned in advance. What Cevik's people needed to do was to get him out of the cage, and Bourne accomplished that quite efficiently. He's nothing if not efficient, this we already knew."

The Old Man slammed his hand on the table. "If he's behind Cevik's escape, I swear I'll skin him alive."

"I'll take care of Bourne."

"Patience, Matthew. For the moment we need him. We must get Martin Lindros back, and Bourne is now our only hope. After due consideration, the Operations Directorate sent the Skorpion Two team in after Skorpion One, and we lost them both."

"With my contacts, I told you I could gather a small unit-"

"Of freelancers, former NSA operatives now in the private sector." The DCI shook his head.

"That idea was DOA. I could never sanction a bunch of mercenaries, men I don't know, men not under my command, for such a sensitive mission."

"But Bourne-dammit, you know his history, and now history is repeating itself. He does whatever the h.e.l.l he wants whenever it suits him and f.u.c.k anyone else."

"Everything you say is true. Personally, I despise the man. He represents everything that I've been taught is a menace to an organization like CI. But one thing I know about him is that he's loyal to the men he bonds with. Martin is one of those. If anyone can find him and extract him, it's Bourne."

At that moment, the door swung open and Anne Held poked her head in.

"Sir, we have an internal problem. My clearance has been busted. I called Electronic Security and they said it wasn't a mistake."

"That's right, Anne. It's part of Matthew's reorganization plan. He felt you didn't need top clearance to do the work I give you."

"But sir-"

"Clerical staff has one set of clearance priorities," Lerner said. "Operational staff another. Neat and clean, no ambiguities." He looked at her. "Still a problem, Ms. Held?"

Anne was furious. She looked to the Old Man, but realized at once that she'd get no help from that quarter. She saw his silence, his complicity, as a betrayal of the relationship she'd worked so long and hard to forge with him. She felt compelled to defend herself, but knew this was the wrong time and place to do it.

She was about to close the door when a messenger from Ops Directorate came up behind her. She turned, took a sheet of paper from him, turned back.

"We just got a read on the missing agent," she said.

The DCI's mood had darkened considerably in the last few minutes. "Who is it?" he snapped.

"Soraya Moore," Anne told him.

"You see," Lerner said sternly, "another one of our people transferred out of my jurisdiction. How am I expected to do my job when people I have no control over slide off the grid? This is directly attributable to Lindros, sir. If you would give me control of Typhon at least until he's either found or confirmed dead-"

"Soraya's with Bourne," Anne Held said to her boss before Lerner could say another word.

"G.o.ddamm it!" the DCI exploded. "How the h.e.l.l did that happen?"

"No one seems to know," Anne said.

The DCI was standing, his face empurpled with rage. "Matthew, I do believe Typhon needs an acting director. As of now, you're it. Go forth and get the f.u.c.king job done ASAP."

"Stop the motorcycle," Soraya said in his ear.

Bourne shook his head. "We're still too close to the-"

"Now." She put the blade of a knife against his throat. "I mean it."

Bourne turned down a side street, pulled the cycle over to the curb, engaged the kickstand. As they both got off, he turned to her. "Now what the h.e.l.l is this all about?"

Her eyes blazed with an ill-contained fury. "You killed Tim, you sonovab.i.t.c.h."

"What? How could you even think-?"

"You told Cevik's people where he'd be."

"You're insane."