the yard. He pushed Petra’s head down as he himself bent over to keep them both from

being spotted. Beyond a crane, a crew chief’s trailer was set up on concrete blocks.

Temporary electric lines were strung into it from just above the tin roof.

Petra threw herself headlong under the trailer, and Bourne followed. The blocks set the

trailer just high enough for them to worm their way on their bellies to the far side, where Bourne saw that a gap had been cut in the chain-link fence.

Crawling through the gap, they found themselves in a quiet alley filled with industrial-

size garbage bins and a Dumpster filled with broken tiles, jagged blocks of terrazzo, and

pieces of twisted metal, no doubt from whatever buildings had once stood in the now

empty space behind them.

“This way,” Petra whispered as she took them out of the alley and down a residential

street. Around the corner, she went to a car and opened it with a set of keys.

“Give me the keys,” Bourne said. “They’ll be looking for you.”

He caught them in midair, and they both got in. A block away they passed a cruising

police car. The sudden tension caused Petra’s hands to tremble in her lap.

“We’re going right past them,” Bourne said. “Don’t look at them.”

Nothing further passed between them until Bourne said, “They’ve turned around.

They’re coming after us.”

Thirty-Three

I’M GOING to drop you off somewhere,” Arkadin said. “I don’t want you in the

middle of whatever’s going to come.”

Devra, in the passenger’s seat of the rented BMW, shot him a skeptical look. “That

doesn’t sound like you at all.”

“No? Who does it sound like?”

“We still have to get Egon Kirsch.”

Arkadin turned a corner. They were in the center of the city, a place filled with old

cathedrals and palaces. The place looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

“There’s been a complication,” he said. “The opposition’s king has entered the chess

match. His name is Jason Bourne and he’s here in Munich.”

“All the more reason why I should stay with you.” Devra checked the action on one of

the two Lugers that Arkadin had picked up from one of Icoupov’s local agents. “A

crossfire has many benefits.”

Arkadin laughed. “There’s no lack of fire to you.”

That was another thing that drew him to her-she wasn’t afraid of the male fire burning

in her belly. But he had promised her-and himself-that he would protect her. It had been a

very long time since he’d said that to anyone, and even though he’d sworn never to make

that promise again, he’d done just that. And strange to say, he felt good about it; in fact, there was a sense now when he was around her that he’d stepped out of the shadows he’d

been born into, that had been tattooed into his flesh by so many violent incidents. For the first time in his life he felt as if he could take pleasure in the sun on his face, in the wind lifting Devra’s hair behind her like a mane, that he could walk down the street with her

and not feel as if he was living in another dimension, that he hadn’t just arrived here from another planet.

As they stopped at a red light, he glanced at her. Sunlight was streaming into the

interior, turning her face the palest shade of pink. At that precise moment he felt

something rush out of him and into her, and she turned as if she felt it, too, and she

smiled at him.

The light turned green and he accelerated through the cross street. His cell phone

buzzed. A glance down at the number of the incoming call told him that Gala was calling.

He didn’t answer; he had no wish to talk to her now, or ever, for that matter.

Three minutes later, he received a text message. It read: MISCHA DEAD. KILLED

BY JASON BOURNE.

Having followed Rodney Feir and General Kendall over the Key Bridge into

Washington proper, Rob Batt made sure his long-lens SLR Nikon was fully loaded with

fast film. He shot a series of digital photos with a compact camera, but these were only

for reference, because they could be Photoshopped in a heartbeat. To forestall any

suspicion that the images might be manipulated, he’d present the undeveloped roll of film

to… well, this was his real problem. For a legitimate reason he was persona non grata at

CI. It was astonishing how quickly years-long associations vanished. But now he realized

he’d mistaken the camaraderie he’d developed with what had been his fellow directors

for friendship. As far as they were concerned he no longer existed, so going to them with

any alleged evidence that the NSA had turned yet another CI officer would be either

ignored or laughed at. Trying to approach Veronica Hart was similarly out of the

question. Assuming he could ever get to her-which he doubted-speaking to her now

would be like groveling. Batt had never groveled in his life, and he wasn’t going to now.

Then he laughed out loud at how easy it was to become self-deluded. Why should any

of his former colleagues want anything to do with him? He’d betrayed them, abandoned

them for the enemy. If he were in their shoes-and how he wished he were!-he’d feel the

same venomous animosity toward someone who’d sold him out, which was why he’d

embarked on this mission to destroy LaValle and Kendall. They’d sold him out-hung him

out to dry as soon as it suited their purposes. The moment he came on board, they’d taken

control of Typhon away from him.

Venomous animosity. That was an excellent phrase, he thought, one that precisely

defined his feelings toward LaValle and Kendall. He knew, deep down, that hating them

was the same as hating himself. But he couldn’t hate himself; that was self-defeating. At

this very moment he couldn’t believe he’d sunk so low as to defect to the NSA. He’d

gone through his line of thinking over and over, and now it seemed to him as if someone

else, some stranger, had made that decision. It hadn’t been him, it couldn’t have been

him, ergo, LaValle and Kendall had made him do it. For that they had to pay the ultimate

price.

The two men were on the move again, and Batt headed out after them. After a ten-

minute drive, the two cars ahead of him pulled into the crowded parking lot of The Glass

Slipper. As Batt passed by, Feir and Kendall got out of their respective cars and went

inside. Batt drove around the block, parked on a side street. Reaching into the glove

compartment, he took out a tiny Leica camera, the kind used by the Old Man in his

youthful days of surveillance. It was the old spy standby, as dependable as it was easy to

conceal. Batt loaded it with fast film, put it in the breast pocket of his shirt along with the digital camera, and got out of the car.

The night was filled with a gritty wind. Refuse spiraled up from the gutter, only to

come to rest in a different place. Jamming his hands in his coat pockets, Batt hurried

down the block and into The Glass Slipper. A slide guitarist was up on stage, wailing the

blues, warming up for the feature act, a high-powered band with several hit CDs under its

belt.

He’d heard about the club by reputation only. He knew, for instance, that it was owned

by Drew Davis, primarily because Davis was a larger-than-life character who continually

inserted himself into the political and economic affairs of African Americans in the

district. Thanks to his influence, homeless shelters had become safer places for their

residents, halfway houses had been built; he made it a point to hire ex-cons. He was so

cannily public about these hirings that the ex-cons had no choice but to make the most of