Her hands gripped him, pulling him even closer. “There is only one way to explain.” She turned and led him back into the sweets shop. In the far corner she pushed several fragrant bales out of the way, revealing a wooden staircase, full of dust and crystals of palm sugar. They ascended to an upper floor that was, or until recently had been, someone’s living quarters. The owner’s daughter, judging by the posters of film and rock stars on the walls. It was brighter up here, the windows bringing in blinding sunlight. But it was also as hot as a fever. Tanirt appeared unaffected.
In the center of the floor she turned to him. “Tell me, Bourne, what do you believe in?”
He did not answer.
“The hand of God, fate, destiny? Any of those things?”
“I believe in free will,” he said at last, “in the ability to make one’s own choices without interference, either by organizations or by fate, whatever you want to call it.”
“In other words, you believe in chaos, because man doesn’t control anything in this universe.”
“That would mean I’m helpless. I’m not.”
“So neither Law nor Chaos.” She smiled. “Yours is a special path, the path between, where no one before you has gone.”
“I’m not sure I’d put it that way.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not a philosopher. How would you put it?”
“Where is this going?” he said.
“Always the soldier, the impatient soldier,” Tanirt said. “Death. It’s going toward the nature of your death.”
“Death is the end of life,” Bourne said. “What else is there to know about its nature?”
She went to one of the windows and opened it. “Tell me, please, how many of the enemy can you see?”
Bourne stood beside her, feeling her intense warmth as if she were an engine that had been running at speed for a long time. From this lofty vantage point, he could see a fair number of streets and observe their occupants.
“Somewhere between three and nine. It’s difficult to be precise,” he said after several minutes. “Which one will kill me?”
“None of them.”
“Then it will be Arkadin.”
Tanirt cocked her head. “This man Arkadin will be the herald, but he won’t be the one who kills you.”
Bourne turned to her. “Then who?”
“Bourne, do you know who you are?”
He had been with her long enough to know that he wasn’t expected to answer.
“Something happened to you,” Tanirt said. “You were one person, now you’re two.”
She put the flat of her hand on his chest and his heart seemed to skip a beat-or, more accurately, to race past it. He gave a little gasp.
“These two people are incompatible-in every way incompatible. Therefore, there is a war inside you, a war that will lead to your death.”
“Tanirt-”
She raised the hand that had been on his chest, and he felt as if he had sunk into a bog.
“The herald-this man Arkadin-will arrive in Tineghir with the one who will kill you. It is someone you know, perhaps very well. It is a woman.”
“Moira? Is her name Moira?”
Tanirt shook her head. “An Egyptian.”
Soraya!
“That… that doesn’t seem possible.”
Tanirt smiled her enigmatic smile. “This is the conundrum, Bourne. One of you can’t believe it is possible. But the other one knows that it is possible.”
For the first time in Bourne’s memory he felt truly helpless. “What am I to do?”
Tanirt took his hand in hers. “How you react, what you do, will determine whether you live or die.”
29
HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” M. Errol Danziger said when he reached Bud Halliday by phone.
“My birthday was months ago,” the secretary of defense said. “What do you want?”
“I’m waiting in my car downstairs.”
“I’m busy.”
“Not for this.”
There was something in Danziger’s voice that stopped Halliday from blowing him off. Halliday called his assistant and told him to clear his calendar for the next hour. Then he grabbed his overcoat and took the stairs down. As he walked across the White House grounds, the guards and Secret Service agents nodded to him deferentially. He smiled at the ones he knew by name.
Climbing into the back of Danziger’s car, he said, “This better be good.”
“Trust me,” Danziger said. “It’s better than good.”
Twenty minutes later the car pulled up at 1910 Massachusetts Avenue, SE. Danziger, who was sitting nearer the curb, stepped out and held the door open for his boss.
“Building Twenty-seven?” Halliday said as he and Danziger trotted up the steps of one of the modern brick buildings in the General Health Campus complex. “Who died?” Building 27 housed the office of the district’s chief medical examiner.
Danziger laughed. “A friend of yours.”
They passed through two levels of security and took the oversize stainless-steel-clad elevator down to the basement. The elevator reeked of bleach and a sickly-sweet smell Halliday was loath to identify.
They were expected. An assistant coroner, a slight, bespectacled man with a nose like a beak and a dour demeanor, nodded to them, guiding them through the cold room. He stopped three-quarters of the way down the bank of stainless-steel doors, opened one, and slid out a corpse on a tray. A sheet was pulled up over the face. At Danziger’s signal, the assistant coroner peeled back the sheet.
“Mary, Mother of God,” Halliday said, “is that Frederick Willard?”
“None other.” Danziger looked as if he was about to break into a jig of joy.
Halliday took a step closer. He pulled out a small mirror and stuck it under Willard’s nostrils. “No breath.” He turned to the assistant coroner. “What the hell happened to him?”
“Difficult to say at this time,” the man said. “So many things, so little time…”
“The gist,” Halliday said shortly.
“Torture.”
Halliday had to laugh. He looked at Danziger. “Damn ironic, isn’t it?”
“That’s how it struck me.”
At that moment the secretary’s PDA buzzed. He drew it out and looked at it. He was needed at the White House.
Rather than the Oval Office, the president was in the War Room three levels down below the West Wing. Vast computer screens ringed the room, in the center of which was an oval table outfitted with all the accoutrements of twelve virtual offices.
When Bud Halliday arrived, the president was chairing a meeting with Hendricks, the national security adviser, and Brey and Findlay, the respective heads of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. From their grim expressions it was clear there was an emergency brewing.
“Glad you could make it, Bud,” the president said, waving Halliday to a chair on the opposite side of the table.
“What’s happened?” Halliday said.
“Something’s come up,” Findlay said, “and we’d value your advice on how to proceed.”
“A terrorist attack on one of our overseas bases?”
“Rather closer to home.” Hendricks appeared to be taking point. Reversing a dossier in front of him, he slid it across the table to Halliday. He spread his hands. “Please.”
Halliday opened the dossier and was confronted with a photo of Jalal Essai. He stayed very calm, was pleased to see that his hand was steady as it turned the onionskin pages of the file.
When he was certain he had himself perfectly under control, he raised his gaze. “Why are we looking at this man?”
“We have information linking him to the torture and murder of Frederick Willard.”
“Evidence?”
“As yet, no,” Findlay said.
“But we have every indication that it will be forthcoming,” Hendricks said.
“Do you want me to buy the bridge, too?” Halliday said caustically.
“What’s disturbing, Mr. Secretary, is that this man Essai has flown beneath our radar, even though he represents a clear and present national security threat.” This from Findlay again.
Halliday tapped the dossier. “There is intel here on Essai going back years. How could we not-?”