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Don Fernando sat on the gunwale, facing Bourne. He seemed very tired, and suddenly old, shrunken in on himself. “Marlon Etana was put in place to inform on the Domna.”
“In other words, he was Christien Norén’s replacement.”
“Precisely.” Don Fernando rubbed his hands down his trousers. “The problem was, Etana went rogue.”
“El-Arian turned him?”
Don Fernando shook his head. “He made a secret deal with Essai when Essai became a dissident.”
“Etana belonged to the same organization that Christien did, that you do.” Bourne dealt the older man a hard look. “It’s past time you told me about it.”
“You’re right, of course.” Don Fernando ran a hand across his eyes. “Maybe if I had, Essai would still be alive.” He waited for a moment, as if deciding how best to explain the next part. At length, he pushed himself off the gunwale. “It’s time for a drink and some serious talk.”
Don Fernando chose a seaside café that looked closed, but wasn’t. Many of the chairs were overturned on the tabletops and a young boy with hair down to his shoulders was sweeping the floor in a desultory manner, as if he were already asleep.
The proprietor waddled out from behind the bar to shake Don Fernando’s hand and escort them to a table. Don Fernando ordered brandy but Bourne waved away the notion of alcohol. He wanted his head clear.
“When my father died, everything changed,” Don Fernando said. “You must understand: My father was everything to me. I cherished my mother, yes, but she was ill, bedridden much of my life.”
When the snifter was set upon the table, Don Fernando stared into the amber liquid. He wet his lips with it before he began. “My father was a big man in every way imaginable. He was tall, and powerful, both physically and in spirit. He dominated every room he walked into. People were frightened of him, I could see it very clearly in their eyes; when they shook hands with him, they trembled.”
The proprietor appeared with a glass of sherry and set it down in front of Bourne, even though he hadn’t ordered it. He shrugged, as if to say: A man should not engage in serious conversation without proper fortification.
“Starting when I was seven, he took me hunting,” Don Fernando continued when the proprietor had returned to his place behind the bar. “This was in Colombia. I shot my first gray fox when I was eight. I had tried for a year but could not pull the trigger. I wept the first time I saw my father shoot one. My father took me over to it, dipped his fingertips into its blood, and smeared my lips with it. I recoiled, gagging. And then, under his stern gaze, I felt ashamed. So I screwed up my courage, returned to the fox, bloodied my own fingers, and stuck them in my mouth. My father smiled, then, and I never before or since felt such a sense of complete satisfaction.”
Bourne sensed that these memories unnerved Don Fernando, that he was privileged to be hearing them.
“As I said, when my father died everything changed. I took over his business, for which he had been training me for years. It was difficult to see him on his deathbed, so frail, laboring to take a breath, this man who had felled trees and enemies with equal ease and zeal. We all come to this point in our lives, I know, but with my father it was different because of what he had trained me for, what was waiting for me the moment he passed.”
Don Fernando had drained his glass. Now he signaled for more. The proprietor came with the bottle, filled the snifter, then left the bottle.
Don Fernando nodded his thanks before he went on. “In the last years of his life, my father introduced me to a number of men. All of them were Russian, all of them frightened me on some”—he waved a hand—“I don’t know, some primitive level. In their eyes I saw a world filled with shadow, piled with death.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how else to explain their effect on me.
“Gradually, though, I grew used to them. The darkness that had fallen over me didn’t recede, rather it became understandable. I was introduced to death, and then I had cause to recall my first blooding, and I was never so grateful for how my father helped me. Because these men dealt in death—as, it turned out, did my father.”
Don Fernando held out his hand and when Bourne extended his, he gripped it tightly, clapping his other hand over them both.
“As I said, Jason, all of the men my father introduced me to were Russian—all, that is, save one. Christien Norén.”
26
I NEED A CELL,” Peter Marks said. He was sitting up in bed, though he was able to walk now without panting like an overtaxed engine.
Deron dug out a burner cell in a blister pack. “You may be surprised to know that whoever was after you is even more powerful than we thought.”
Peter cocked his head. “Nothing would surprise me now. How’s that?”
Deron slit open the blister pack, freeing the phone. “I sent Ty to the Metro police to find out about your kidnappers. They claim they have nothing. Someone did make a nine-one-one call, but by the time a patrol car arrived on the scene, there was nothing to see, no bodies, no ambulance, and obviously, no you.”
Peter sighed. “Back to square one.”
“Not exactly.” Deron handed over what appeared to be a human tooth. “Ty found this at the scene and grabbed it before he helped you onto his motorcycle. You must have knocked it out of one of your kidnappers.”
Peter turned the tooth over in his hands. “How does it help me?”
As he probed at it, Deron said, “Watch it!” and snatched it out of his hand. “This only looks like a tooth. It’s actually hollow, filled with liquid hydrogen cyanide.”
“A suicide pill?” Peter said. “I thought that went out with the NKVD.”
Deron rolled the tooth between his fingertips like a marble. “Apparently not.”
“But it is Russian in origin.”
Deron nodded. “So now we know the country of origin of your kidnappers. Does that help?”
Peter frowned. “I’m not sure yet.”
Deron activated the phone, added a package of minutes, and handed it to Peter. “You have twenty minutes of time, overseas included,” he said. “After that it’s trash.”
Peter nodded gratefully. Deron knew his security backward and forward. After Deron left the room, he punched in the cell number of Soraya’s contact in Damascus whom he’d called days ago when he first read about El-Gabal, the defunct mining company Roy FitzWilliams had consulted for before he was hired by Indigo Ridge.
“Ashur,” he said when the voice answered, “this is Peter—”
“Peter Marks? We thought you had been neutralized.”
A trickle like ice water rode down Peter’s spine. “Who is this? Where’s Ashur?”
“Ashur is dead. Or nearly so.”
Peter felt a prickle at the nape of his neck. Using the suicide tooth as a cue, he said, “Kahk dyelayoot vlee znayetye menya?” How do you know me?
“Ashur told us,” the voice replied in kind. An evil chuckle. “He didn’t want to, but in the end he really had no choice.”
What the hell are Russians doing in Damascus? Peter asked himself. “Why did you try to kill me?”
“Why are you interested in El-Gabal? It’s been out of business for years.”
Peter’s anger kicked in, but he was careful to keep it in check. “If you kill Ashur—”
“His death is already assured,” the voice said with a maddening serenity.
With an enormous effort, Peter put Ashur aside and gathered his thoughts. As a stab in the dark, he said, “El-Gabal isn’t defunct. It’s of too much importance to you.”
Silence.
I’m right, El-Gabal still exists. “I have the suicide tooth from one of your men. Once I pried it out of his mouth, he talked. I know El-Gabal is the center of everything.”
More silence, hollow and somehow eerie.
“Hello? Hello?”
Dead air pulsed in his ear. Peter hit REDIAL, but got nothing, not even Ashur’s voice mail. The tenuous line of communication had been cut.
r /> Your friendship was with the girls’ father, not their mother,” Bourne said.
Don Fernando nodded.
“And you never told them.”
He took another sip. It might have been a trick of the light, but his eyes now seemed to be the precise color of the brandy. “I only know Kaja. The truth is far too complex for her to—”
“She’s been looking for answers to who her father was all her adult life,” Bourne said with some force. “You should have told her.”
“I couldn’t,” Don Fernando said. “The truth is far too dangerous for the girls to know.”
Bourne disengaged his hand from the older man’s. “What gives you the right to make that decision?”
“Mikaela’s death gives me the right. She found out; the truth killed her.”
Bourne sat back, regarding Don Fernando. He was like a chimera. Every time you thought you had him figured out, he changed shape the way Bourne himself changed identities.
Don Fernando, gazing deep into Bourne’s eyes, shook his head. “At least give me a fair hearing before you find me guilty.”
Your eye looks terrible,” Boris said. “I’ll get you a steak to put on it.”
“No time,” Zachek said, closing the connection on his cell phone, “Cherkesov was spotted going through security at the Munich airport.”
Boris stepped to the curb and flagged down a taxi. “Where is he headed?”
“Damascus,” Zachek said as they climbed in.
Boris told the driver their destination, and he headed toward the nearest entrance to the A 92 Munich–Deggendorf Autobahn.
“Syria.” Boris sat back against the seat. “What the hell is he doing in Damascus?”
“We don’t know,” Zachek said, “but we intercepted a call on his cell phone. He’s been given instructions to go to El-Gabal, a mining company on Avenue Choukry Kouatly.”
“Curious.”
“It gets curiouser,” Zachek said. “So far as we’ve been able to ascertain, El-Gabal has been defunct since the 1970s.”
“Clearly, your intel is wrong,” Boris said drily.
“I’ll try not to revert, if you don’t,” Zachek said.
“We made a deal that’s satisfactory to both of us,” Boris said. “That doesn’t mean I have to like you.”
“But you have to trust me.”
“It’s not you I worry about,” Boris said. “It’s SVR.”
“You mean Beria.”
Boris stared out the window, relieved that he was getting out of Germany. “I take care of Cherkesov and you take care of Beria. It’s a straightforward bargain.” But he knew nothing was straightforward in their line of work, where lying was not only endemic, but necessary for survival.
“It’s a matter of trust,” Zachek said, punching in a coded number on his phone. “It always is.” He spoke into it for several moments, then disconnected. “We have a ticket waiting for you at the airport. Cherkesov took the four PM flight. We got you on the six forty. You’ll arrive in Damascus just after two tomorrow morning. The good news is your flight is shorter. You’ll have an hour in Damascus before he arrives.” He was texting a message. “We’ll have a man waiting to take you to—”
“I don’t want one of your men looking over my shoulder.”
Zachek glanced up. “I assure you—”
“I know Damascus as well as I know Moscow,” Boris said with such finality that Zachek shrugged.
“As you wish, General.” He put away his phone and cleared his throat. “We are putting our lives in each other’s hands.”
“That’s not wise,” Boris said. “We scarcely know each other.”
“What’s to be done about Ivan Volkin?”
Boris understood Zachek’s point. Boris and Ivan went back decades. Their friendship had not protected him from Volkin’s betrayal.
“You won’t be safe until he’s planted,” Zachek said in such an offhand manner that Boris laughed.
“First things first, Zachek.”
The other man smiled. “You called me by name.”
Bourne willed himself to relax. “Go on.”
“Almaz was born during the dark days of Stalin and his chief enforcer, Lavrentiy Beria.” Don Fernando cupped the snifter, inhaling the brandy fumes before drinking again. He did it slowly, as if it was a ritual that calmed him, brought him back to himself. “As you doubtless know, Beria was named head of NKVD in 1938. From that moment on, the secret police became the state-sanctioned executioners Stalin lusted for. At Yalta, Stalin introduced him to President Roosevelt as ‘our Himmler.’
“Beria’s bloodthirsty ways are well documented, but, believe me, the truth is far more dreadful. Kidnappings, torture, rape, maiming, and death became the order of the day for his enemies and their families—women and children, it was all the same to him. And as the months turned into years there were those within the NKVD who became disgusted with the unrelenting cruelty and violence. It was impossible to voice their dissent, so they went underground, forming a group they called Almaz—diamond—because diamonds are hidden, created under tremendous pressure deep within the earth.”
Don Fernando’s eyes were blue again, glinting like the morning sea. He had finished his brandy and he poured himself another.
“These men were clever. They knew their survival depended not only on the absolute secrecy of Almaz, but on expanding it beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. Allies were their only long-term hope, both in terms of power and influence, and also as an escape conduit should the need arise to flee the motherland.”
“That’s where your father came in,” Bourne said.
Don Fernando nodded. “My father started in Colombia working the oil fields, but soon became bored. ‘Fernando,’ he used to say to me, ‘I am plagued with a restless mind. You are forbidden to follow in my footsteps.’ He was joking, of course, but only slightly. He shipped me off to London, where I took a First in economics at Oxford. But the truth was, I enjoyed physical labor, so when I returned to Colombia, much to my father’s horror, I went to work in the oil fields, working my way up. I found great satisfaction in eventually buying my former bosses out.
“My father, meanwhile, turned his restless mind to international banking, founding Aguardiente Bancorp.” He knocked down his third brandy and attacked the bottle again. “My three brothers were, unfortunately, of no use whatsoever. One died of a drug overdose, another died in a cartel shoot-out. The third died, I think, of a broken heart.”
He waved his hand again. “In any event, it was through Aguardiente’s increasingly lucrative international deal-making that my father came in contact with the dissidents of Almaz. There is no more ardent capitalist than a converted socialist. So it was with my father. He sympathized completely with Almaz and pledged to help them in any way he could. Not without compensation, however. Almaz systematically raided Stalin’s coffers. My father laundered their money, then invested it most wisely, including his generous cut. They all grew rich and increasingly powerful.
“By the time Beria was finally forced out by Khrushchev and his allies, Almaz was a force to be reckoned with, so much so that its members could have surfaced, but they had learned not to believe in any form of Soviet government. Besides, they were comfortable in the shadows, and that is where they chose to remain, influencing events behind the scenes.”
“But their ambitions outgrew the Soviet Union,” Bourne interjected.
“Yes. They foresaw the Soviet Union’s demise. With my father’s urging, they diversified.”
“And by this time I imagine your father was a full-fledged member,” Bourne said. “Joining Almaz was what he had trained you for.”
Don Fernando nodded. “I joined Christien Norén as the first non-Russian members of Almaz.”
“You were the brains and he was the brawn, the enforcer.”
Don Fernando finished off his brandy, but didn’t refill his glass. His eyes had taken on a slightly glassy, alcohol-fueled look. “It’s true that Ch
ristien was very good at killing people. I think he might have actually enjoyed it.”
He threw some bills on the table and both men rose, strolling out of the café and up the sea road toward Don Fernando’s house. The night was exceptionally clear, the moon the palest yellow, riding high in the cloudless sky. Rigging clanged arrhythmically against masts in the gusts of salt wind off the sea. The far-off roars of Vespas lent the end of the night a melancholy note.
“If Christien was a mole inside the Domna,” Bourne said, “then I assume the two groups were antagonists.”
“I would say, rather, that their spheres of influence overlapped. Then Benjamin El-Arian made his deal with the devil.”
“Semid Abdul-Qahhar.”
Don Fernando nodded. “It was then we realized we had made a terrible mistake. We started the rumor that Treadstone had targeted the Domna. We knew that the Domna would dispatch Christien to terminate your old boss.”
“You wanted Alex Conklin dead.”
“On the contrary, we wanted Christien to recruit Conklin into Almaz.”
Bourne knew that Conklin was of Russian extraction. He had hated the communists with every fiber of his being. Almaz would have had a good chance of recruiting him to its cause.
“It would have been the ultimate coup,” Don Fernando continued, “accomplished right under the Domna’s nose.”
Up ahead, Don Fernando’s street came into view, the lights in his house warm and beckoning.
“But the plan went wrong,” Bourne said. “Conklin killed Christien and El-Arian made his deal with his own enforcer, Semid Abdul-Qahhar.”
“Worse, the Domna became aware of Almaz as its implacable enemy, and now we are in a state of all-out war.”
There were a number of ways into a bank and Soraya knew them all. Ten am found her walking down Avenue Montaigne and into the Chanel boutique, where she bought a day outfit that fit her perfectly. It reeked of moneyed status. In a nearby boutique she used her Treadstone credit card, which had no spending limit, to purchase a pair of Louboutin shoes that complemented her ensemble. As she was signing the receipt, she was overcome again; directed to the bathroom by a concerned saleswoman, she rushed in, slammed the door behind her, and had just enough time to make it to the toilet before she retched so violently she imagined she was giving up the lining of her stomach. Now she began to worry; vomiting was a common symptom of a serious concussion. Her heart was like a trip-hammer in her chest and, feeling abruptly weak, she grabbed onto the stall door. Gritting her teeth, she took deep breaths and carried on.
