“Marrying Berengária couldn’t have helped him,” Moira pointed out.
“I don’t know. She’s proved herself to be a shrewd businesswoman. Most people’s best guess is that she’s the one behind the expansion. I think she’s more willing to take calculated risks than he is, and so far she hasn’t made a single misstep.”
“How was her relationship with Gustavo?”
“By all reports the two siblings were close. They bonded early, after their mother died.”
“Do you think she was involved in his business?”
Essai folded his arms over his chest. “Difficult to say. Whatever involvement she might have had was certainly not evident, there’s nothing whatsoever to link her with Gustavo’s drug trafficking.”
“But you did say that she was a canny businesswoman.”
He frowned. “You think she had the mole inside her own brother’s shop?”
Moira shrugged. “Who can say?”
“Neither of them would be that stupid.”
Moira nodded. “I agree, though if someone wants us to think one of them had the mole murdered, it seems talking to them would be useful. But first I want to pay a visit to Roberto Corellos.”
Essai smiled the dark smile that chilled Moira’s soul. “I think, Ms. Trevor, that you’ve already begun to earn your fee.”
Bourne and Chrissie were on their way back in a driving rainstorm that had come upon them virtually without warning when Bourne’s cell rang.
“Mr. Stone.”
“Hello, Professor,” Bourne said.
“I have some news,” Giles said. “I’ve received an e-mail back from my chess partner. It seems that he has solved the riddle of the third word.”
“What is it?” Bourne asked.
“Dominion.”
“Dominion,” Bourne repeated. “So the three words engraved on the inside of the ring are: Severus Domna Dominion. What does it mean?”
“Well, it could be an incantation,” Giles said, “or an epithet, a warning. Even-and I’m being deliberately fanciful here-the instructions for turning lead into gold. Without additional information I’m afraid there’s no way of knowing.”
The road ahead was smeared with rain, the wipers slapped back and forth on their prescribed arc. Bourne checked the side mirror, as he did automatically every thirty seconds or so.
“There is an interesting tidbit about Ugaritic my friend provided, though I can’t see how it’s relevant. The basis of its interest for him and his colleagues is that there are documents-or fragments thereof-they claim come from the court of King Solomon. It seems that Solomon’s astrologers spoke Ugaritic amongst themselves, that they believed in its alchemical powers.”
Bourne laughed. “With all the legends of King Solomon’s gold, I can see where the scientists of an early age believed alchemy was the key to turning lead into gold.”
“Frankly, Mr. Stone, I told him the same thing.”
“Thank you, Professor. You’ve been most helpful.”
“Anytime, Mr. Stone. A friend of Christina’s is a friend of mine.”
As Bourne put away his cell, he saw that the black-and-gold truck that had pulled into their lane three vehicles back some minutes ago was now right behind them.
“Chrissie, I’d like you to get off the motorway,” he said quietly. “When you do, pull over.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
He said nothing, his eyes flicking to the side mirror. Then he reached out and stopped her from using the turn signal. “Don’t do that.”
Her eyes opened wide and she gave a little gasp. “What’s going on?”
“Just do what I tell you and everything will be all right.”
“Not reassuring.” She moved into the left-hand lane as the next exit sign became visible through the rain. “Adam, you’re scaring me.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
She took the ramp, which immediately curved around to the left, and pulled onto the shoulder. “Then what is your intention?”
“To drive,” he said. “Move over.”
She got out of the Range Rover, covered her head, which was tucked down between her hunched shoulders, and went around, jumping into the passenger’s side. Her door was not even fully closed when Bourne saw the truck making its way around the curve of the off-ramp. Immediately he put the vehicle in gear and pulled out.
The truck was directly behind him as if tethered to the Range Rover with a grappling hook. Bourne put on a burst of speed, went through a light on the red, then onto the motorway’s entrance ramp. Traffic was moderate and he was able to weave in and out of the lanes. He was just thinking that a truck was an impractical vehicle to pursue them when a gray BMW pulled up abreast of them.
As the window slid down, Bourne yelled for Chrissie to get down. He pushed her, then bent low over the wheel as gunshots shattered his side window, showering him with glass pellets and fistfuls of rain. At that moment he saw the black-and-gold truck coming up fast behind him; they meant to box him in.
Both vehicles rocked back and forth, their sides scraping together dangerously. Bourne risked a glance in the rearview mirror. The black-and-gold truck was right on their tail.
“Brace yourself,” he said to Chrissie, who was bent over as far as her seat belt would allow, her arms over her head.
He angled the car, then slammed on the brakes. For a split second the Range Rover skidded on the wet tarmac, then he had compensated. The offside rear bumper crumpled on impact with the truck, the Range Rover swerved at a sharp angle so that, as he had calculated, the driver’s-side rear bumper plowed into the BMW with tremendous force, as if it had been shot out of a cannon. Impelled by the crash, the BMW veered hard right and, out of control, slammed into the guardrail with such force that the entire driver’s side was staved in. A fireworks of sparks, a shrieking of tortured metal as the BMW bounced off the guardrail and spun. The front end was heading directly for the Range Rover and Bourne turned the wheel hard to the right, cutting off a yellow Mini. There was a horrific screech of tires, horns blared, fenders were dented or flattened in a chain reaction. Bourne accelerated into the gap, switched lanes again, then as he cleared more of the traffic moved back across to the fast lane.
“Jesus,” Chrissie whispered. “Jesus Christ.”
The Range Rover was still rocking on its shocks. Bourne could no longer see the smashed-up BMW or the black-and-gold truck in the rearview mirror.
After a crash or an accident, even a near miss, everything goes quiet, or possibly the human ear, traumatized like the rest of the organism, goes temporarily deaf. In any event, it was dead silent in the SUV as Bourne exited the motorway, turned off the access road as soon as he could, and rolled along streets lined with wholesalers and warehouses, where no one shouted in fear, no horns blared angrily or brakes screeched, where order still reigned and the chaos of the motorway seemed to belong to another universe. He didn’t stop until he found a deserted block and pulled over.
Chrissie was silent, her face dead white. Her hands trembled in her lap. She was near to weeping with both terror and relief.
“Who are you?” she said after a time. “Why is someone trying to kill you?”
“They want the ring,” Bourne said simply. After what had just happened she deserved at least a modicum of the truth. “I don’t know why yet, I’m trying to figure that out.”
She turned to him. Her eyes had paled, too, or perhaps that was simply a trick of the light. Bourne didn’t think so.
“Was Trace involved with this ring?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.” Bourne started the car and pulled out into the street. “But her friends were.”
She shook her head. “This is all going much too fast for me. Everything’s turned upside down, I can’t seem to get my bearings.”