AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Tell me, Ivan Ivanovich,” he said, “what if it were you Cherkesov ordered me to kill?”
Volkin’s eyes were almost all yellow now, a cat’s eyes, full of mysterious, unknowable thoughts. “A test is a test, my friend. A sacrifice is a sacrifice. I would trust you to know that.”
La Défense rose like a post-modern stranger at the extreme western edge of Paris. And yet it was a far better solution exiling the hightech business district of the city to La Défense than allowing modern construction to spoil Paris’s gorgeous architecture. The gleaming green-glass Île de France Bank building sat midway along the Place de l’Iris, which ran like an aorta through the heart of La Défense. On the top floor, fifteen men sat on either side of a polished marble table. They wore elegant made-to-measure business suits, white shirts, and conservative ties, even the Muslims. It was a requirement of the Domna, as was the gold ring on the forefinger of the right hand. The Domna was probably the only group in existence where the two major Muslim sects, Sunni and Shi’a, peacefully coexisted and even helped each other when the occasion called for it.
The sixteenth man commanded the head of the table. He had a cruel mouth, a hawk’s beak for a nose, piercing blue eyes, and skin the color of wild honey. By his left elbow and slightly behind him sat the lone woman, notebooks open on her lap. She was younger than the men, or at least seemed so, with her long red hair, porcelain skin, and wide-apart eyes, transparent as seawater. Occasionally, when the man at the head of the table extended his left hand, she passed him a sheet of paper in the crisp, professional manner of a nurse handing a surgeon a scalpel. He called her Skara and she called him Sir.
When the man at the head of the table read from the printout, everyone in the room listened, except perhaps for Skara, who had memorized the entire contents of her constantly updated notebooks, which she considered far too sensitive to be digitized.
The seventeen people inhabited a room made of concrete and glass into which had been embedded a network of electronic gear that would foil even the most sophisticated attempts at eavesdropping.
The directorate heads of the Severus Domna had convened from the four corners of the globe—Shanghai, Tokyo, Berlin, Beijing, Sanaa, London, Washington, DC, New York, Riyadh, Bogotá, Moscow, New Delhi, Lagos, Paris, and Tehran.
Benjamin El-Arian, the man at the head of the table, finished addressing the men at the table. “Frankly, America has always been a thorn in our side. Until now.” He curled his hand into a fist. “Our goal is within our grasp. We have found another way.”
For the next ten minutes El-Arian explicated every detail of the new plan. “This will, by design, put a great deal of pressure on myself and the other American members, but I have every confidence that this new plan will gain us far more than what was in place before Jason Bourne derailed it.” He continued with a few more words of summation, then called an adjournment.
The others filed out, and El-Arian used the intercom to call in Marlon Etana, the Domna’s most powerful and, therefore, influential field agent.
“I trust you are about to assign someone to terminate Bourne,” Etana said as he approached his leader. “He murdered our people in Tineghir, including Idir Syphax, who was beloved by all of us.”
El-Arian smiled toothily. “Forget Bourne. Your assignment is Jalal Essai. Since betraying his sacred trust to us, he has caused us considerable inconvenience. I want you to find him and terminate him.”
“But through Bourne’s interference we lost our chance at Solomon’s gold.”
El-Arian frowned. “Why do you remind me of something I already know?”
Etana’s hand curled into a ball. “I want to kill him.”
“And leave Essai free to do more damage?” He placed a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Trust in these decisions, Marlon. Carry out your assignment. Remember the dominion. The Domna is counting on you.”
Etana nodded, turned, and, without a backward glance, left the room.
All was silence in the vast echoless place until Skara rose. “Five minutes,” she said without looking at her watch.
El-Arian nodded and stepped to the north-facing window. He stared down at the wide road, the foreshortened people. He was a scholar, a professor of archaeology and ancient civilizations, a formal man with an almost regal bearing.
“This will work,” he said almost to himself.
“It will work,” Skara said as she came up beside him.
“What color?”
“Black. A Citroën.” She breathed against his shoulder. Her scent was curious, cinnamon and something slightly bitter, burnt almond, perhaps. “Three minutes from now no one will remember it.”
El-Arian nodded again, almost absently. The familiar frisson coming off her still made him slightly uncomfortable. He thought fleetingly of his wife and children safe, protected by many layers, but so far away.
“Who will I be tomorrow?”
He turned to see her slender hand extended. Reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket, he produced a thick packet.
Opening it, Skara found a passport, her new legend, a first-class air ticket with an open return, credit cards, and three thousand American dollars. “Margaret Penrod,” she read off the open passport.
“Maggie,” El-Arian said. “You call yourself Maggie.” He tilted his head slightly as his gaze returned to the street below them. “It’s all in the legend.”
Skara nodded, as if satisfied. “I’ll memorize it tonight on the plane.”
“There’s Laurent,” El-Arian said, indicating a figure in a dark suit exiting their building. He could not keep a certain excitement out of his voice.
Skara drew out a disposable cell phone and punched in Laurent’s number. At once, a pre-programmed code was transmitted. El-Arian had already commenced his mental countdown. Laurent gave a little shiver and, drawing out his cell, checked its screen.
“What’s he doing?” El-Arian said.
“Nothing,” Skara assured him. “He must have felt the pulse, that’s all.”
El-Arian frowned. “He shouldn’t have felt anything.”
Skara shrugged.
“Can he do anything about it?”
“Not a thing.”
At zero minus fifteen, a blur appeared in his peripheral vision, and he shifted his gaze to the oncoming black Citroën.
El-Arian craned his neck. “Is he calling someone?”
Skara’s shapely shoulders lifted and fell. “There’s no need to worry.”
The next instant El-Arian understood her certainty. The Citroën struck Laurent so hard he flew perhaps ten feet in the air. He hit the ground, lay there for several seconds, then, astonishingly, began to move, trying to crawl back to the curb. The car swerved to allow its right-hand tires to crush his head, then it sped off so fast that by the time bystanders started to rush out into the street it had vanished.
