Sever, Icoupov was a man you could reason with.”

“Are you saying that you’ve met both Semion Icoupov and Asher Sever?” Bourne said.

“That’s right,” Pelz said, nodding. “Why?”

Bourne had gone cold as he contemplated the unthinkable. Could the professor have

been lying to him all the time? But if so-if he was in fact a member of the Black Legion-

why in the world would he entrust the delivery of the attack plans to Pyotr’s shaky

network? Surely he would have known how unreliable its members were. Nothing

seemed to make sense.

Knowing he had to solve this problem one step at a time, he took out his cell phone,

scrolled through the photos, brought up the one the professor had sent of Egon Kirsch. He

looked at the two men in the photo, then handed the phone to Pelz.

“Virgil, do you recognize either of these men?”

Pelz squinted, then stood and walked nearer to one of the bare lightbulbs. “No.” He

shook his head, then, after a moment’s further scrutiny, his forefinger jabbed at the photo.

“I don’t know, because he looks so different…” He returned to where Bourne sat, turned

the phone so they could both see the photo, and tapped the figure of Professor Specter.

“… but, damn, I’d swear this one is Asher Sever.”

Thirty-Six

PETER MARKS, chief of operations, was with Veronica Hart in her office, poring

over reams of personnel data sheets, when they came for her. Luther LaValle,

accompanied by a pair of federal marshals, had swept through CI security, armed with

their warrant. Hart had only the briefest of warnings-a phone call from the first set of

security guards downstairs-that her professional world was imploding. No time to get out

of the way of the falling debris.

She barely had time to tell Marks, then stand up to face her accusers before the three

men entered her office and presented her with the federal warrant.

“Veronica Rose Hart,” the senior of the stone-faced federal marshals intoned, “you are

hereby placed under arrest for conspiring with one Jason Bourne, a rogue agent, for

purposes that violate the regulations of Central Intelligence.”

“On what evidence?” Hart said.

“NSA surveillance photos of you in the courtyard of the Freer handing a packet to

Jason Bourne,” the marshal said in the same zombie voice.

Marks, who was also on his feet, said, “This is insane. You can’t really believe-”

“Shut it, Mr. Marks,” Luther LaValle said with no fear of contradiction. “One more

word out of you and I’ll have you put under formal investigation.”

Marks was about to reply when a sharp look from the DCI forced him to bite back his

words. His jaws clamped shut, but the fury in his eyes was unmistakable.

Hart came around the desk, and the junior marshal cuffed her hands behind her back.

“Is that really necessary?” Marks said.

LaValle pointed at him wordlessly. As they marched Hart from her office, she said,

“Take over, Peter. You’re acting DCI now.”

LaValle grinned. “Not for long, if I have anything to say about it.”

After they’d gone, Marks collapsed into his chair. Finding that his hands were

trembling, he clasped them together, as if in prayer. His heart was pounding so hard he

found it difficult to think. He jumped up, walked over to the window behind the DCI’s

desk, stood staring out at the Washington night. All the monuments were lit up, all the

streets and avenues were filled with traffic. Everything was as it should be, and yet

nothing looked familiar. He felt as if he’d entered an alternate universe. He couldn’t have been witness to what just happened, NSA couldn’t be about to absorb CI into its gigantic

corpus. But then he turned around to find the office empty and the full horror of seeing

the DCI frog-marched out in handcuffs swept over him, made his legs weak, so that he

sought out the big chair behind the desk and sat in it.

Then the implications of where he sat, and why, sank in. He picked up the phone and

dialed Stu Gold, CI’s lead counsel.

“Sit tight. I’ll be right over,” Gold told him in his usual no-nonsense voice. Did

nothing faze him?

Then Marks began to make a series of calls. It was going to be a long and harrowing

night.

Rodney Feir was having the time of his life. As he accompanied Afrique into one of

the rooms in the back of The Glass Slipper, he felt as if he were on top of the world. In

fact, popping a Viagra, he decided to ask her to do a number of things he’d never tried

before. Why the hell not? he asked himself.

While he was undressing he thought of the information on Typhon’s field agents Peter

Marks had sent him via interoffice mail. Feir had deliberately told Marks he didn’t want

it sent electronically because it was too insecure. The info was folded into the inside

pocket of his coat, ready to give to General Kendall before they left The Glass Slipper

tonight. He could have handed it over while they were at dinner, but he’d felt, all things

considered, that a champagne toast after all their treats had been consumed was the

proper way to cap off the night.

Afrique was already on the bed, spread languidly, her large eyes half closed, but she

got right down to business as soon as Feir joined her. He tried to keep his mind on the

proceedings, but seeing as how his body was totally in it, there wasn’t much point. He

preferred dwelling on the things that made him truly happy, like getting the better of

Peter Marks. When he was growing up it was people like Marks-and, for that matter,

Batt-who’d had it all over him, brainiacs with brawn, in other words, who’d made his life

miserable. They were the ones who had the cool circle of friends, who got all the great-

looking girls, who rode in cars while he was still tooling around on a scooter. He was the

nerd, the chubby-fat, really-kid who was made the butt of all their jokes, who was pushed

around and ostracized, who, despite his high IQ, was so tongue-tied he could never stick

up for himself.

He’d joined CI as a glorified pencil pusher, and, yes, he’d worked his way up the

professional ladder, but not into fieldwork or counterintelligence. No, he was chief of

field support, which meant that he was in charge of gathering and distributing the

paperwork generated by the very CI personnel he longed to be like. His office was the

central hub of supply and demand, and there were days when he could convince himself

that it was the nerve center of CI. But most of the time he saw himself for what he really

was-someone who kept pushing electronic lists, data entry forms, directorate requests,

allocation tables, budget spreadsheets, personnel assignment profiles, matйriel lading

bills, a veritable landslide of paperwork whizzing through the CI intranet. A monitor of

information, in other words, a master of nothing.

He was enveloped in pleasure, a warm, viscous friction spreading outward from his

groin into his torso and limbs. He closed his eyes and sighed.

At first, being an anonymous cog in the CI machine suited him, but as the years

passed, as he rose in the hierarchy, only the Old Man understood his worth, for it was the

Old Man who promoted him, time after time. But no one else-certainly none of the other

directors-said a word to him until they needed something. Then a request came flying

through CI cyberspace as quick as you could say, I need it yesterday. If he got them what

they wanted yesterday, he heard nothing, not even a nod of thanks in the hallway, but