He drove south through the district. At some invisible demarcation, the massive government buildings vanished, replaced by local businesses, cheap retail outlets, fast-food chains, storefront missions, and corner bars. Outside the bars, young men in hoodies loitered, exchanging small packets of dope for wads of bills. Old men sat on stoops, head in hands or leaning back against the gray stone steps, eyes half closed, heads nodding. Caucasians grew rare as hen’s teeth, then disappeared altogether. This was a different Washington, one tourists never saw. Congressmen, either. Patrol cars were few and far between. When one did appear, it rolled at speed, as if its occupants couldn’t wait to be elsewhere, anywhere but here.

Essai pulled the car over in front of something that passed for a hotel. Its rooms went by the hour, and when he dragged Willard inside, supporting him, the whores assumed Willard was a drunk, passed out on his feet. They showed Essai their flyblown wares. He ignored them.

He placed a doctor’s black bag on the scarred counter of the attendant’s foul-smelling cubbyhole and slid a twenty across. The attendant was whey-faced, slim as a twig, neither young nor old. He was watching porn on a portable TV.

“What,” Essai said, “no concierge?”

The attendant laughed but didn’t turn his glassy eyes from the TV screen. Without looking he unhooked a key from a pegboard and dropped it on the counter.

“I don’t want to be disturbed,” Essai said.

“Everyone wants the same thing.”

He slid across another twenty, the attendant snapped it up, selected a different key, and said, “Second floor in the back. You could die in there and no one would know.”

Essai took the key and the black bag.

There was no elevator. Getting Willard up the stairs proved something of a chore, but Essai managed. A grime-laden window at the far end of the narrow hallway let in light that seemed both leaden and exhausted. A bare bulb burned halfway down, highlighting the constellations of obscene graffiti scrawled on the walls.

The room looked like a jail cell. The bare-bones furnishings-a bed, a dresser with a drawer missing, a rocking chair-were either gray or colorless. The window looked out on an air shaft, where it was always nighttime. The room smelled strongly of carbolic and bleach. Essai did not want to think of what had gone on there in the past.

Dumping Willard on the bed, he set down the doctor’s bag, opened it, and placed a number of items in a neat line on the stained coverlet. This bag and its contents were always with him, a habit that had been ingrained in him at an early age, when he had been in training to move to America, to insinuate himself into the lives of the people Severus Domna selected. He had no idea how the group came up with Bud Halliday’s name or how it suspected that he would rise so quickly into the firmament of American politics, but then he was used to Severus Domna’s uncanny prescience.

Using a box cutter, he stripped off Willard’s clothes, then unwrapped a Depends and fitted it around his loins. He slapped Willard’s cheeks lightly enough to rouse him slowly out of his unconscious state. Before Willard was fully conscious, he elevated his head and shoulders, and tipped a bottle of castor oil down his throat. At first, Willard choked and gagged. Essai eased off, then fed the viscous liquid to him more slowly. Willard swallowed it all.

Disposing of the bottle, Essai slapped Willard hard on one cheek, then the other, sending blood rushing into his head. Willard started awake, his eyes blinking rapidly. Then he looked around.

“Where am I?” His voice was thick and furred.

When his tongue ran around his lips, Essai reached for the roll of duct tape.

“What’s this taste?”

As Willard started to retch, Essai slapped a length of tape across his mouth.

“If you vomit, you’ll suffocate. I advise you to clamp down on your gag reflex.”

He sat on the chair, rocking slowly as Willard struggled to regain his equilibrium. When he saw his prisoner winning that battle, he said, “My name is Jalal Essai.” His eyes opened wide at Willard’s response. “Ah, I see you’ve heard of me. Good. That makes my job easier. You’ve just come from seeing Benjamin El-Arian. It was El-Arian, I warrant, who told you about me. He painted me as the villain, I have no doubt. Well, heroes and villains-it’s all in your point of view. El-Arian would deny this, but then he’s proved himself to be irresolute, like a reed blown first this way then that by shifting winds.”

Essai rose, crossed to the bed, and ripped the tape off Willard’s mouth.

“I know you’re wondering about that taste in your mouth.” He smiled. “You swallowed a bottle of castor oil.” He pointed. “Hence the diaper. Not long from now some very nasty stuff is going to be coming out of you. The diaper will help contain it, or at least some of it. I’m afraid there will be too much for it to absorb, and then…” He shrugged.

“Whatever you want from me you won’t get.”

“Bravo! That’s the spirit! But sadly for you, I’ve already gotten what I want. Like others El-Arian has dealt with or sent after me, you’ll be dumped on his doorstep. This procedure will continue until he ceases his actions and forgets about me.”

“He’s not about to do that.”

“Then he and I have a long road to travel.” Essai wadded up the tape and threw it away. He stuffed the roll back into the black bag. “You, however, have a significantly shorter road to travel.”

“I don’t feel well.” Willard said this in a curious voice, as if he were a querulous child talking to himself.

“No,” Essai said, stepping back from the bed, “I don’t suppose you do.”

27

NIGHT STILL LAY along the macadam roads and concrete sidewalks the following morning when Bourne arrived at Heathrow Airport. It was drizzling and chilly, and he was happy to get out of London. His flight left at seven twenty-five and arrived in Marrakech at one fifteen, with a brief stopover in Madrid. There were no direct commercial flights.

He was sitting in the only coffee shop open at that hour, its plastic chairs and tables wan in the fluorescent lights, sipping over-roasted coffee that tasted like ashes when Don Fernando Hererra appeared, walked over, and sat down without either invitation or greeting.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bourne said.

Don Fernando said nothing. Lost within his beautiful suit, he seemed to have aged since the last time Bourne had seen him, though only a week or so had passed. He was staring absently at a display of luggage in the window of a store across the concourse.

“How did you find me?” Bourne said.

“I suspected you were going to Marrakech.” Abruptly he turned to Bourne and said, “Why did you kill my son? He was only trying to help you as I asked him to do.”

“I didn’t kill him, Don Fernando.” It was then Bourne felt the nick of the knife point on the inside of his thigh. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“I have traveled far beyond wise, young man.” His eyes were pale, liquid, filled with anguish. “Now I am a father grieving for his dead son. That’s all I am, that’s all the life this old frame can muster.”

“I would never harm Diego,” Bourne said. “I think you know that.”

“There is no one else but you.” Don Hernando’s voice, though soft, was like a cry full of pain and suffering. “Betrayal, betrayal!” He shook his head. “The only other possibility is Ottavio Moreno. He’s my godson. He would never lay a hand on Diego.”

Bourne sat very still, feeling a trickle of blood down his leg. He could end this at any moment, but he chose to let the situation play out because a violent end wouldn’t help him. He was extremely fond of Don Hererra; he couldn’t lift a finger against him. “And yet, it was Ottavio who knifed Diego,” he said.