She ran her hands through her hair, then noticed something odd. “Why are we heading back toward Oxford?”
He gave her a wry look as he headed toward the on-ramp of the motorway. “Like you, I don’t like people shooting at me.
“I need to get a better look at the BMW and our friend inside.” Noting her terrified expression, he added, “Don’t worry. I’ll get out near the crash site. Are you okay to drive?”
“Of course.”
He turned left and rolled onto the motorway, in the direction of Oxford. The worst of the rain had drifted away; only a light drizzle remained. He slowed the wipers down. “I’m sorry for the damage.”
She shuddered and gave him a grim smile. “It couldn’t be helped, could it?”
“When is Scarlett due back from your parents’ house?”
“Not until next week, but I can pick her up anytime,” she said.
“Fine.” Bourne nodded. “I don’t want you to go to your house in Oxford. Is there someplace else you can stay?”
“I’ll go back to Tracy’s flat.”
“That’s out, as well. These people must have picked me up there.”
“What about my parents’ house?”
“That’s no good, either, but I want you to pick Scarlett up from them and go somewhere else, somewhere you haven’t been before.”
“You don’t think-?”
Very deliberately, he produced the Glock he’d found in Perlis’s flat and placed it in the glove compartment.
“What are you doing?”
“We were being followed, possibly all the way from Tracy’s flat. There’s no point in taking a chance these people know about Scarlett-and where your parents live, for that matter.”
“But who are they?”
He shook his head.
“This is a nightmare, Adam.” Her voice was brittle, as if her words were made of glass. “What on earth was Trace mixed up in?”
“I wish I had an answer for you.”
Traffic on the opposite side of the motorway was at a standstill, which told him that they were nearing the crash site. Directly ahead the vehicles on their side were all but inching along, which would make it less difficult for him to get out and for Chrissie to take the wheel.
“What about you?” she asked as he put the Range Rover in neutral.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll make my way back to London.” Her worried expression revealed that she didn’t believe him. He gave her his cell number. But when he saw her dig a pen out of her handbag he added, “Memorize it, I don’t want you writing it down.”
They got out of the Range Rover and she slid behind the wheel. “Adam.” She reached out and grabbed his arm. “For God’s sake, take care of yourself.”
He smiled. “I’ll be fine.”
But she wouldn’t let him go. “Why are you pursuing this?”
He thought about Tracy dying in his arms. He carried her blood on his hands.
Ducking his head through the window, he said, “I owe her a debt I can never repay.”
Bourne vaulted over the median onto the other side of the rain-slick motorway. As he approached the crash site his mind was racing, taking in the welter of ambulances, emergency vehicles, and police cars. The personnel had come from all over the surrounding area, which was a stroke of luck for what he had in mind. The crash site had not yet been cordoned off. He saw a body laid out on the ground, covered by a tarp. A squad of forensics personnel patrolled the area adjacent to the corpse, taking notes or digital photos, marking out small bits of forensic evidence with numbered plastic cones, and conferring among themselves. Each fragment of evidence-drops of blood, shards of a broken taillight, bits of shredded fabric, the litter of a shattered car window, an oil slick-was being photographed from several angles.
Bourne moved to the side of one of the emergency vehicles and unobtrusively slipped into the cab, rooting through the glove compartment for a form of ID. Finding nothing there, he moved on to the sun visors. One of them had a rubber band around it. Pulling it down, he found several cards, one of which was an expired ID. It always amazed him that people grew so attached to their own history, they were reluctant to part with any tangible evidence of it. Hearing someone approaching, he grabbed a pair of latex gloves, slid over and out the other side. As he did so, he clipped the ID to his coat and walked purposefully into the melee of official personnel trying to make sense of the mess left on the smeared tarmac of the motorway.
He squinted at the BMW; the guardrail had finally impaled it like a harpoon, wrecking it entirely. Bourne saw where he’d driven Chrissie’s car into the corner of the rear bumper. Squatting down next to it, he vigorously scrubbed off the few flecks of paint from her vehicle. He had just finished memorizing the plate number when a local police inspector crouched down beside him.
“What d’you reckon?” He was a whey-faced man with bad teeth and breath to match. He looked as if he had been raised on tepid beer, bangers and mash, and treacle.
“The speed must have been fantastic in order to do this damage.” Bourne spoke in a hoarse voice, using his best South London accent.
“Cold or allergies?” the local inspector said. “Either way, you should take care of yourself in the bloody-minded weather.”
“I’ll need to see the victims.”
“Righto.” The inspector rose on creaky knees. The backs of his hands were chapped and reddened, the result of a long, hard winter stuck in an underheated office. “This way.”
He led Bourne through the knots of people to where the corpse was still laid out. He lifted the tarp for Bourne to have a look. The body was broken up. Bourne was surprised to see that the man was older, he guessed in his late forties or early fifties-extremely odd for an executioner.
The inspector’s wrists rested on his bony knees. “With no ID, it’ll be a bitch trying to notify his wife.”
The corpse wore what appeared to be a gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand. Bourne thought that interesting, but he wasn’t about to share his opinion, or anything else for that matter, with the inspector. He had to get a look at the inside of the ring.
“I’m going in,” Bourne said.
The inspector guffawed.
Bourne slipped off the ring. This ring was far older than the one he already had. He held it up to see more clearly. It was scratched and worn, thinned out over time. It took gold maybe a hundred years or more to get this thin. He tipped the ring. It was engraved on the inside. He could make out the Old Persian and Latin, yes. He peered more closely, rotating the ring between his fingers. There were only two words, Severus Domna. The third one, Dominion, was missing.
“Find anything?”
Bourne shook his head. “I thought maybe there’d be some sort of engraving-‘To Bertie, from Matilda,’ something of that sort.”
“Another dead end,” the inspector said sourly. “Christ on a crutch, my knees are killing me.” He stood up with a little groan.
Now Bourne knew what Severus Domna must stand for: a group or a society. Whatever you wanted to call them, one thing was clear-they had gone to great lengths to keep themselves secret from the world at large. And now, for whatever reason, they had surfaced, risking their secretive status-all for the ring engraved with their name and the word Dominion.
OLIVER LISS, STRIDING down North Union Street in Alexandria’s Old Town, checked the time and, a moment later, stepped into one of those large chain drugstores that carried most everything. He went past the dental hygiene and foot care sections, picked out a cheap cell phone with thirty prepaid minutes, and took it up to the checkout counter where an Indian woman rang it up, along with a copy of The Washington Post. He paid cash.
Back out on the street, the paper tucked under one arm, he pulled apart the plastic blister pack and walked back beneath a dull and starless sky to where he’d parked his car. He got in and attached the phone to his portable charger, which would give it a full charge in less than five minutes. While he waited, he put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He hadn’t had much sleep last night or, for that matter, any night since he’d agreed to fund the resurrected Treadstone.