Halliday guffawed so hard he almost choked on the smoke. He sat forward laughing and coughing. His eyes watered.
“I must say, Essai, for an Arab you’re quite all right.”
“I’m Berber-Amazigh.” Essai stated this as fact, without a trace of rancor.
Halliday eyed him through the smoke. “You speak Arabic, don’t you?”
“Among other languages, including Berber.”
Halliday spread his hands, as if the other’s answer proved his point. He and Jalal Essai had met in college, where Essai spent two years as an exchange student. In fact, it was because of Essai that Halliday became interested in what he perceived as the growing Arab threat to the Western world. Essai was Muslim, but strictly speaking an outsider in the highly splintered and religicized Arab world. Through the lens of Essai’s worldview, Halliday recognized that it was only a matter of time before the Arab world’s sectarian battles spilled over their boundaries and became a series of wars. For that very reason he cultivated Essai as a friend and adviser, realizing only much later, when Essai was becoming disinterested in Severus Domna’s objectives, that Essai had been dispatched to the States, to his college specifically, to cultivate him as a friend and ally.
When greed got the best of Essai, when he confessed what his original motivation had been, all of Halliday’s worst prejudices against Arabs were confirmed. He hated Essai, then. He’d even plotted to kill him. But in the end, he had abandoned his revenge fantasies, seduced, as Essai had been, by King Solomon’s gold. Who could resist such a glittering prize? He and Essai, as Halliday came to realize in a repellent moment of understanding, had more in common than seemed possible, given their disparate backgrounds. Then again they were both soldiers of the night, inhabiting the world of shadows that existed on the edges of civilized society, protecting it from destructive elements both without and within.
“The Severus Domna is no different from any tyrant-fascist, communist, or socialist,” Jalal Essai said. “It lives to accumulate power, to allow its members to influence world events for the sole purpose of amassing more power. In the face of such power, mere human politics becomes irrelevant, as does religion.”
Essai sat back, crossing one leg over the other. “In the beginning Severus Domna was motivated by the desire for change, a meeting of the minds between East and West, among Islam and Christianity and Judaism. A noble goal, I admit, and for a time they succeeded, if only in small ways. But then, like all altruistic endeavors, this one fell afoul of human nature.”
He suddenly sat forward, on the edge of the sofa. “And I tell you this, there is no stronger motivation in human beings than greed, even fear. Greed, like sex, makes men stupid, blind to fear, or to the need for anything else. Greed distorted the goals of Severus Domna to such an extent that they became virtually irrelevant. The members continued to pay lip service to the original mission, but by then Severus Domna was rotten to the core.”
“What does that make us?” Halliday continued to puff on his cigar. “We’re as greedy as the Severus Domna, perhaps more.”
“But we’re aware of what drives us,” Jalal Essai said with a glint in his eyes. “We’re both clear-eyed and clearheaded.”
Scarlett stared up at Bourne while he untied her. Her cheeks were tear-streaked. She wasn’t crying now, but she was trembling uncontrollably and her teeth were chattering.
“Is Mum okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“Who are you?” Tears were coming, more fitfully this time. “Who was that man?”
“My name is Adam, and I’m a friend of your mum’s,” Bourne said. “I asked her to help me and she took me to Oxford to see Professor Giles. You remember him?”
Scarlett nodded, sniffling. “I like Professor Giles.”
“He likes you, too. Very much.”
His voice was soothing, and she seemed to be calming down. “You flew into the room like Batman.”
“I’m not Batman.”
“I know that,” she said somewhat indignantly, “but you’ve got blood all over you and you’re not hurt.”
He plucked at his damp shirt. “It’s not real blood. I needed to fool the man who kidnapped you and your mother.”
She regarded him appraisingly. “Are you a secret agent like Aunt Tracy?”
Bourne laughed. “Aunt Tracy wasn’t a secret agent.”
“Yes, she was.”
That indignant note in her voice warned Bourne not to treat her like a child.
“What makes you think that?”
Scarlett shrugged. “You couldn’t talk to her without her holding something back. I think secrets were all she had. And she was always sad.”
“Are secret agents sad?”
Scarlett nodded. “That’s why they become secret agents.”
There was something pure and profound in that statement, but for the moment Bourne was content to let it go. “Professor Giles and your mum helped me with a problem. Unfortunately, this man wanted something of mine.”
“He must’ve wanted it badly.”
“Yes, he did.” Bourne smiled. “I’m very sorry I led you and your mother into danger, Scarlett.”
“I want to see her.”
Bourne lifted her into his arms. She seemed cold as ice. He carried her over to the bed by the window. Chrissie was covered in shards of glass. She was unconscious.
“Mummy!” Scarlett leapt out of Bourne’s arms. “Mummy, wake up!”
Bourne, noting the edge of terror in Scarlett’s voice, bent over Chrissie. Her pulse was good, her breathing even.
“She’s okay, Scarlett.” He pinched Chrissie’s cheeks and her eyelids fluttered, then opened. She looked up into his face.
“Scarlett.”
“She’s right here, Chrissie.”
“Coven?”
“Adam flew through the window like Batman,” Scarlett said, proud of her new knowledge.
Chrissie frowned, noticing Bourne’s shirt. “All that blood.”
Scarlett gripped her mother’s hand tightly. “It’s fake, Mum.”
“Everything’s fine now,” Bourne said. “No, don’t move yet.” He scooped the glass off her as best he could. “All right, unbutton your blouse.” But her fingers trembled too badly for her to grip the buttons properly.
“My arms are killing me,” she said softly. She turned her head and smiled into her daughter’s face. “Thank God you’re safe, sugarplum.”
Scarlett burst into fresh tears. Chrissie looked up at Bourne as he undid her buttons, shrugged her out of the blouse so that the last of the glass shards fell harmlessly on either side of her.
Then he lifted her up. When he’d swung her away from the bed, he put her down. As they stepped over Coven’s lifeless body, Chrissie shuddered. They stopped in the room she had been using to get sweaters for her and Scarlett, who, in a kind of delayed reaction, was leaking tears as she knelt to put on her sweater, which was yellow with a pattern of pink bunnies eating ice-cream cones. Halfway down the stairs she began to whimper.
Chrissie put an arm around her. “It’s all right, sugarplum. Everything’s all right, Mum has you now,” she whispered over and over.
When they reached the ground floor, she said to Bourne, “Coven tied my father up, he’s here somewhere.”
Bourne found him, bound and gagged, in one of the kitchen closets. He was unconscious, either from the blow that caused the bruised swelling on his left temple or from the lack of oxygen. Bourne laid him on the kitchen floor and untied him. It was dark with the power still off.
“My God, is he dead?” Chrissie said as she and Scarlett ran in.
“No. His pulse is strong.” He took his finger away from the carotid and began to free him from his bonds.
Chrissie, her courage disintegrating at the sight of her father so helplessly incapacitated, began to soundlessly weep, but this caused Scarlett to sob, so she bit her lip, holding back more tears. She ran cold water in the sink, soaked a dishcloth, and filled up a glass. Crouching down beside her daughter, she placed the folded towel against Bourne’s cheek, which had started to swell and discolor.