“I have a message from Peter Marks.”
Hendricks’s brow furrowed and tension came into his shoulders and arms. “Where is Peter?”
“He’s safe, sir. He’s been under attack. He needs to talk with you.”
“Well, put him on.” There was a pause. “Peter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am, sir.”
“What the hell has happened to you?”
Peter recounted the near miss with the car bomb and his escape from the ambulance with its impostor crew. “It was sheer luck that Tyrone was behind me,” Peter concluded.
“Where the hell are you? I’ll send people to—”
“All due respect, sir, after the breaches in security you warned me of and the breach at the Treadstone building, I’d rather no one know where I am for the moment. Soraya found me through Bourne.”
“Bourne?”
“Both Soraya and Bourne know Tyrone, sir. That’s all it’s safe to say at the moment.”
“And Soraya?”
“Still in Paris. She found out who ordered the murder of her contact. Benjamin El-Arian. He’s dead.” He continued on, telling his boss about the intel he had found that had triggered the attacks on him. “You’ve got to send a team to bring Roy FitzWilliams back to DC for questioning ASAP. FitzWilliams consulted for this Syrian mining company, El-Gabal, and failed to report it when he was vetted.”
Another failure of the vetting process, Hendricks thought. It was a wonder this government was still standing.
Peter said: “We’re looking at an imminent threat on US soil.”
“ Remember me when you are protecting Indigo Ridge,” Skara had said.
“Indigo Ridge,” Hendricks breathed.
“My thought exactly.”
“Good work, Peter.”
“Sir, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. You were right about assigning me Indigo Ridge in this roundabout way.”
“I’m just happy my decision didn’t lead to your death.”
“Your job is no bed of roses,” Peter said. “But you do it well.”
“Thanks.” Hendricks thought a moment. “To maintain security until we have this situation nailed down, have Tyrone phone me every day at noon. I’ll let you know as soon as FitzWilliams is in custody. You deserve to be in on the interrogation.”
He closed the connection and called his Indigo Ridge field operations director, who was already getting flak from Danziger.
“Forget about him,” Hendricks said. “I want you to take a detachment and take Roy FitzWilliams into custody.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Assign your best man to fly him back to DC ASAP. I’ll have an air force plane waiting for you. I want him delivered directly to me, is that clear?”
“As crystal, sir. Consider it done.”
Hendricks called an air force general of his acquaintance and got him to authorize a jet to stand by. As he put his phone away, his gaze fell on Skara’s card, lying in the drawer of the bedside table.
“ Your job is no bed of roses,” Peter had said.
Into his mind swam an image of Skara as he had seen her the day they met, kneeling in his tiny strip of a garden, tending his roses.
He snatched up the card. There was a rose planted squarely in its center. With his heart pounding, he jumped up and ran out of the apartment, leaving the bewildered FBI agents in his wake.
Rebeka no longer looked like a flight attendant; there was a certain intensity about her, sharply alert and purposeful. Her eyes were eager, her cheeks flushed, as if she were about to hurl herself at Fate head-on. She had transformed herself into an avenging angel. She had changed clothes since he’d left her in the restaurant, confirming what he had suspected: She had her own agenda concerning the occupants of the synagogue. All she’d been lacking was the trigger, which he himself had provided when he had given her the identity of the Arab who was desecrating the Jewish house of worship alongside which she had chosen to live. He now suspected that she was Mossad, but in the end it didn’t matter. She was out to infiltrate the synagogue and assassinate Semid Abdul-Qahhar. The trouble was she was walking blind into a lethal crossfire between Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s men and the SVR. He had to stop her.
He was preparing himself to block her way when she veered off. She wasn’t headed for the alley that led to the synagogue after all. But because of their interrupted discussion over dinner concerning the synagogue’s architectural plan, he knew where she was going.
Grabbing Boris, he headed down the street after her.
Boris pulled back. “Are you crazy? You’re going to screw up everything.”
Bourne turned back to him. “It’s a matter of trust, Boris.”
Hesitating only a moment, Boris nodded, then followed Bourne as he headed left, down an alley that ran more or less parallel to the one leading to the synagogue.
Up ahead, Bourne saw Rebeka vanish to the left. He picked up his pace, Boris right behind him. When he reached the spot where Rebeka had disappeared, he saw a passageway no wider than shoulder-width. He plunged in, summoning up the plan of the ancient synagogue as Rebeka had described it to him.
Abruptly he came to the end of the passageway. A blank wall faced him.
“What the hell is this, Jason?” Boris whispered.
“We’re following a Mossad agent who knows another way into the synagogue.”
“How? Did she melt through solid stone?”
They were engulfed in darkness. Bourne reviewed everything he had learned about the synagogue from Rebeka. He knew where it was in relation to the passageway, so he turned to the left and felt along the stone wall, searching for a lever or handle. Nothing. Then he stepped back a pace, almost bumping into Boris, and his right foot scraped against a metal grate.
Both men backed up enough for Bourne to kneel down and feel around with his fingers. The grate was square, large enough for a human being to fit through. Curling his fingers through the holes, he pulled upward. The grate gave easily and he stood it on end against one wall. Then he slipped his legs into the hole. His shoes struck something.
“There’s a ladder,” he said to Boris, who had squatted beside him.
The two men climbed down. The ladder was made of iron, flaking off beneath their grip, attesting to its extreme age. They arrived at the lower level, which was carved out of the living rock. To their left Bourne saw a soft glow, and he and Boris followed it until Bourne was certain they were beneath the synagogue. A set of stone steps led upward, and Bourne and Boris took them, moving with extreme stealth.
At the top of the stairs was a narrow door made of hand-planed hardwood, bound with wide bronze bands. Cautiously, Bourne depressed the iron lever and pushed the door inward. They stepped across the threshold and found themselves in a section of the synagogue that was still in the process of being renovated. Sheets of striated marble and black stone lay against one wall or across rough-hewn sawhorses, where they were being cut to size. Curtains of undyed muslin closed off the area to protect the rest of the interior against the stone dust.
They crept forward until they were at the muslin curtains. Bourne listened for any sounds of a struggle, but heard only the hushed sound of footsteps muffled by carpets, the occasional word or two of Arabic, spoken softly but urgently.
Parting the curtains, they slipped through into the central section, renovated in the Arabic style.
“This Mossad agent is going to get herself killed here,” Boris whispered.
“The name she’s going by is Rebeka, Bourne said.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the SVR and Semid Abdul-Qahhar will kill each other,” Boris muttered as he stared into the middle distance.
But Bourne could tell by his tone that he didn’t believe it. Nothing in their world was ever so neatly wrapped up, there was too much rage and high emotion, too much blood already spilled, so much more to be poured out.
They moved forward. The great spaces the ancient architects of the synagogue had provided were now broken up into small rooms, all ornately painted and furnished, like a sultan’s seraglio. There was none of the desert Arab’s austere sensibility to be found. All the prayer rugs were opulent, woven of the finest silk in intricate, jewel-tone patterns.