He wheeled on her, a frown of disapproval darkening his face. "That's just it, Zina." He pointed to the half-empty bottle on the night table. "Napoleon brandy, soft sheets, a down comforter. These luxuries are not for us."
Zina's eyes opened wide, her heavy lips forming a moue. "And why not?"
"Has the lesson I've just taught you gone in one ear only to fly out the other? Because we are warriors, because we have renounced all worldly possessions."
"Have you renounced your weapons, Hasan?"
He shook his head, his eyes hard and cold. "Our weapons have a purpose."
"These soft things also have a purpose, Hasan. They make me happy." He made a guttural sound in the back of his throat, curt and dismissive.
"I don't want to possess these things, Hasan," Zina said huskily, "just use them for a night or two." She held out a hand to him. "Can't you relax your iron-bound rules for even that short a time? We've both worked hard today; we deserve a little relaxation."
"Speak for yourself. I won't be seduced by luxuries," he said shortly. "It disgusts me that you have been."
"I don't believe I disgust you." She had seen something in his eyes, a sort of self-denial that she naturally enough misinterpreted as the rock of his strict ascetic nature.
"All right, then," she said. "I'll break the brandy bottle, sow the bed with glass, if only you'll come join me."
"I've told you," he warned darkly. "Do not joke of these matters, Zina." She sat up, on her knees moved toward him, her breasts, sheened in golden lamplight, swaying provocatively. "I'm perfectly serious. If it's your wish to lie in a bed of pain while we make love, who am I to argue?"
He stood looking at her for a long time. It did not occur to him that she might be mocking him still. "Don't you understand." He took a step toward her. "Our path is set. We are bound to the Tariqat, the spiritual path to Allah."
"Don't distract me, Hasan. I'm still thinking of weapons." She grabbed a handful of muslin and pulled him toward her. Her other hand reached out, gently caressed the fabric of the bandage that wrapped the area of his thigh where he'd been shot. Then it moved higher.
Their lovemaking was as fierce as any hand-to-hand combat. It arose as much out of wanting to hurt the other as it did from physical need. In their jackhammer thrashing, moaning and release, it was doubtful that love played any role. For his part, Arsenov longed to be ground into the bed of glass shards that Zina had joked about, so that when her nails gripped him, he resisted her, obliging her to hold on tighter, to score his skin. He was rough enough to bait her, so that she bared her teeth, used them on the powerful muscles of his shoulders, his chest, his arms. It was only with the rising tide of pain threatening to overpower the pleasure that the strange hallucinatory sensation in which he was lost receded somewhat.
Punishment was required for what he had done to Khalid Murat, his compatriot, his friend. Never mind that he had done what was needed in order for his people to survive and flourish. How many times had he told himself that Khalid Murat had been sacrificed on the altar of Chechnya's future? And yet, like a sinner, an outcast, he was hounded by doubt and fear, in need of cruel punishment. Though truly, he thought now in the little death that comes in sexual release, was it not always thus with prophets?
Was not this torture further proof that the road he had embarked upon was the righteous one?
Beside him, Zina lay in his arms. She might have been miles away, though in a manner of speaking her mind was also filled with thoughts of prophets. Or, more accurately, one prophet. This latter-day prophet had dominated her mind ever since she had drawn Hasan to the bed. She hated that Hasan could not let himself take pleasure in the luxuries around him, and so, when he grasped her, it was not him she was thinking of, when he entered her, in her mind it was not him at all, but Stepan Spalko to whom she crooned. And when, nearing her end, she bit her lip it was not out of passion, as Hasan believed, but out of a fear that she would shout Spalko's name. She so much wanted to, if only to hurt Hasan in a manner that would cut him to the quick, for she had no doubt of his love for her. This love she found dumb and unknowing, an infantile thing like a baby reaching for its mother's breast. What he craved from her was warmth and shelter, the quick thrust back into the womb. It was a love that made her skin crawl.
But what she craved ...
Her thoughts froze in their tracks as he moved against her, sighing. She had supposed that he was asleep, but he was not, or else something had roused him. Now, attendant on his desires, she had no time for her own thoughts. She smelled his manly scent, rising like a pre-dawn mist, and his breathing quickened just a little.
"I was thinking," he whispered, "about what it means to be a prophet, whether one day I will be called that among our people."
Zina said nothing, knowing that he wished her to be silent now, to listen only, as he reassured himself of his chosen path. This was Arsenov's weakness, the one unknown to anyone else, the one he showed only to her. She wondered if Khalid Murat had been clever enough to have suspected this weakness. She was almost certain Stepan Spalko was.
"The Qur'an tells us that each of our prophets is the incarnation of a divine attribute," Arsenov said. "Moses is the manifestation of the transcendent aspect of reality, because of his ability to speak with God without an intermediary. In the Qur'an, the Lord said to Moses, 'Fear not, you are transcendent.' Jesus is the manifestation of prophethood. As an infant, he cried, 'God gave me the book and placed me as a prophet.'
"But Mohammad is the spiritual incarnation and manifestation of all of God's names. Mohammad himself said, 'What God first created was my light. I was a prophet while Adam was still between water and earth.'"
Zina waited the space of several heartbeats to be certain that he had finished pontificating. Then, with a hand placed on his slowly rising and falling chest, she asked as she knew he wanted her to ask, "And what is your divine attribute, my prophet?" Arsenov turned his head on the pillow so that he could see her fully. The lamplight behind her cast most of her face in shadow, just a fiery line along her cheek and jawbone was limned in a long painterly stroke, and he was caught out in a thought he most often kept hidden, even from himself. He did not know what he would do without her strength and vitality. For him, her womb represented immortality, the sacred place from which his sons would issue, his line continuing through all eternity. But he knew this dream could not happen without Spalko's help. "Ah, Zina, if you only knew what the Shaykh will do for us, what he will help us become."
She rested her cheek against her folded arm. "Tell me." But he shook his head, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "That would be a mistake."
"Why?"
"Because you must see for yourself without any foreknowledge the devastation caused by the weapon."
Now, peering into Arsenov's eyes, she experienced a chill deep in the core of her, where she rarely dared to look. Possibly she felt an intimation of the terrible power that would be unleashed in Nairobi in three days' time. But with the clairvoyance sometimes granted lovers, she understood that what interested Hasan most was the fear this form of death—whatever it would turn out to be—would engender. It was fear he meant to wield, that was clear enough. Fear to use as a righteous sword to regain all that had been lost to the Chechens over centuries of abuse, displacement and bloodshed. From an early age, Zina had been on intimate terms with fear. Her father, weak and dying of the disease of despair that ran like a plague through Chechnya, who had once provided for his family as all Chechen men must but could not now even show his face on the street for fear of being picked up by the Russians. Her mother, once a beautiful young woman, in her last years a sunken-chested crone with thinning hair, bad eyesight and faulty memory.
After she came home from the long day's scavenging, she was obliged to walk three kilometers to the nearest public water pump, stand in the queue for an hour or two, only to walk back, lug the full bucket up the five flights to their filthy room. That water! Sometimes, even now
, Zina would awake, gagging, with its foul turpentine taste in her mouth.
One night her mother sat down and did not get up. She was twenty-eight but looked more than twice that age. From the constantly burning oil fires, her lungs were full of tar. When Zina's younger brother had complained of thirst, the old woman had looked at Zina and said, "I can't get up. Even for our water. I can't go on.. .." Zina rolled and, twisting her torso, turned off the lamp. The moon, previously unseen, filled the casement of the window. At the point where her upper torso dipped down to her narrow waist, a small pool of its cool light fell upon the bed, illuminating the tip of her breast, below which, under the deep curve, lay Hasan's hand. Outside that pool there was only darkness.
For a long time she lay with her eyes open, listening to Hasan's regular breathing, waiting for sleep to claim her. Who knew the meaning of fear better than Chechens? she wondered. In Hasan's face was written the lamentable history of their people. Never mind death, never mind ruin, there was only one outcome that he could see: vindication for Chechnya. And with a heart made heavy by despair, Zina knew that the attention of the world needed to be snapped into focus. These days, there was only one way to do that. She knew Hasan was right: Death had to come in a manner heretofore unthinkable, but what price they might all pay she could not begin to imagine.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jacques Robbinet liked to spend mornings with his wife, drinking cafe au lait, reading the papers and talking with her about the economy, their children and the state of their friends' lives. They never spoke about his work.
He made it a strict rule never to come into the office before noon. Once there, he spent an hour or so scanning documents, interdepartmental memos and the like, writing e-mail responses when necessary. His phone was answered by his assistant, who logged calls and brought him messages deemed urgent by her. In this, as in all things she did for Robbinet, she was exemplary. She had been trained by him and her instincts were unerring.
Best of all, she was utterly discreet. This meant that Robbinet could tell her where he was lunching each day with his mistress—be it a quiet bistro or the mistress's apartment in the fourth arrondissement. This was crucial, since Robbinet took long lunches, even by French standards. He rarely returned to the office before four, but he was often at his desk until well past midnight, in signals with his counterparts in America. Robbinet's official title might be Minister of Culture, but in fact he was a spy at such a high level that he reported directly to the French president.
On this particular evening, however, he was out to dinner, the afternoon having proved so tiresomely hectic he'd had to postpone his daily tryst until late in the evening. There was a flap that concerned him greatly. A worldwide sanction had been routed to him by his American friends, and as he read it, his blood had run cold, for the target for termination was Jason Bourne.
Some years ago Robbinet had met Bourne at, of all places, a spa. Robbinet had booked a weekend at the spa just outside Paris so that he could be with his then-mistress, a tiny thing with enormous appetites. She had been a ballet dancer; Robbinet still recalled with great fondness the marvelous suppleness of her body. In any event, they had met in the steam room and they had gotten to talking. Eventually, in a most unsettling manner, he was to discover that Bourne had been there looking for a certain double agent. Having ferreted her out, he had killed her while Robbinet was getting a treatment—green mud, if memory served. Good thing, too, since the double agent was posing as Robbinet's therapist in order to assassinate him. Is there any place where one is more vulnerable than on a therapist's table? Robbinet wondered. What could he do after that, except take Bourne out to a lavish dinner. That night, over foie gras, veal kidneys in mustard-spiked jus and tarte Tatin, all washed down with three magnificent bottles of the finest ruby Bordeaux, having uncovered each other's secrets, they became fast friends. It was through Bourne that Robbinet had met Alexander Conklin and had become Conklin's conduit to the operations of the Quai d'Orsay and Interpol. In the end, Robbinet's trust in his assistant was Jason Bourne's good fortune, for it was over cafe and thoroughly decadent millefeuille at Chez Georges with Delphine that he received the call from her. He loved the restaurant for both its food and its location. Because it was across the street from the Bourse—the French equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange— it was frequented by brokers and businessmen, people far more discreet than the gossiping politicians with whom Robbinet was, from time to time, obliged to rub elbows.
"There's someone on the line," his assistant said in his ear. Thankfully, she monitored his after-hours calls from home. "He says it's urgent he speak with you." Robbinet smiled at Delphine. His mistress was an elegant, mature beauty whose looks were diametrically opposed to those of his wife of thirty years. They had been having a most delightful conversation about Aristide Maillot, whose voluptuous nudes graced the Tuilleries, and Jules Massenet, whose opera Manon they both thought overrated. Really, he could not understand the American male obsession with girls scarcely out of their teens. The thought of taking as a mistress someone his daughter's age seemed frightful to him, not to mention pointless. What on earth would there be to talk about over cafe and millefeuille^ "Has he given you his name?" he said into the phone. "Yes. Jason Bourne." Robbinet's pulse started to pound. "Put him through," he said immediately. Then, because it was inexcusable to speak on the phone for any length of time in front of one's mistress, he excused himself, went outside into the fine mist of the Parisian evening and waited for the sound of his old friend's voice.
"My dear Jason. How long has it been?"
Bourne's spirits rose the moment he heard Jacques Robbinet's voice booming through his cell phone. At last the voice of someone inside who wasn't—he hoped!—trying to kill him. He was barreling down the Capital Beltway in another car he had stolen on his way to meet Deron.
"To tell you the truth, I don't know."
"It's been years, can you believe it?" Robbinet said. "But, really, I must tell you that I've kept track of you through Alex."
Bourne, who'd felt some initial trepidation, now began to relax. "Jacques, you've heard about Alex."
"Yes, mon ami. The American DCI has sent out a worldwide sanction on you. But I don't believe a word of it. You couldn't possibly have murdered Alex. Do you know who did?"
"I'm trying to find out. All I know for certain at the moment is that someone named Khan may be involved."
The silence at the other end of the line went on so long that Bourne was forced to say,
"Jacques? Are you there?"
"Yes, mon ami. You startled me, that's all." Robbinet took a deep breath. "This Khan, he is known to us. He's a professional assassin of the first rank. We ourselves know that he's been responsible for over a dozen high-level hits worldwide."
"Whom does he target?"
"Mainly politicians—the president of Mali, for instance—but also from time to time prominent business leaders. As far as we've been able to determine, he's neither political nor an ideologue. He takes the commissions strictly for money. He believes in nothing but that."
"The most dangerous kind of assassin."
"Of that there can be no doubt, mon ami" Robbinet said. "Do you suspect him of murdering Alex?"
"It's possible," Bourne said. "I encountered him at Alex's estate just after I found the bodies. It might have been he who called the police because they showed up while I was still in the house." "A classic setup," Robbinet concurred. Bourne was silent for a moment, his mind filled with Khan, who could have shot him dead on campus or, later, from his vantage point in the willow. The fact that he didn't told Bourne a great deal. This apparently wasn't a normal commission for Khan; his stalking was personal, a vendetta of some sort that must have had its origins in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The most logical assumption was the Bourne had killed Khan's father. Now the son was out for revenge. Why else would he be obsessed with Bourne's family?
Why else would he ask about Bourne abandoning Jamie? This theo
ry fit the circumstances perfectly.
"What else can you tell me about Khan?" Bourne said now. "Very little," Robbinet replied, "other than his age, which is twenty-seven." "He looks younger than that," Bourne mused. "Also, he's part Asian." "Rumor is he's half-Cambodian, but you know how reliable rumors can be."
"And the other half?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. He's a loner, no known vices, residence unknown. He burst on the scene six years ago, killing the prime minister of Sierra Leone. Before that, it's as if he didn't exist."
Bourne checked his rear-view mirror. "So he made his first official kill when he was twenty-one."
"Some coming-out party, eh?" Robbinet said dryly. "Listen, Jason, about this man Khan, I can't overemphasize how dangerous he is. If he's involved in any way, you must use extreme caution." "You sound frightened, Jacques."
"I am, man ami. Where Khan is concerned, there's no shame in it. You should be, too. A healthy dose of fear makes one cautious, and believe me, now is a time for caution."
"I'll keep that in mind," Bourne said. He maneuvered through traffic, looking for the right exit. "Alex was working on something, and I think he was killed because of it. You don't know anything about what he was involved with, do you?"
"I saw Alex here in Paris perhaps six months ago. We had dinner. My impression was that he was terribly preoccupied. But you know Alex, always secretive as the tomb." Robbinet sighed. "His death is a terrible loss for all of us." Bourne turned off the Beltway at the Route 123 exit, drove to Tysons Corner. "Does
'NX 20' mean anything to you?"
"That's all you have? NX 20?"
He drove to the Tysons Corner center parking terrace C. "More or less. Look up a name: Dr. Felix Schiffer." He spelled it out. "He works for DARPA."
"Ah, now you have given me something useful. Let me see what I can do." Bourne gave him his cell phone number as he exited the car. "Listen, Jacques, I'm on my way to Budapest but I'm just about out of cash."
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