shook his head. “Colonel Ben David is out for your blood— and, of course, Bourne’s.”
“I had no idea of the Colonel’s intense antipathy toward Bourne.” “Are you saying he’s not justified?”
She thought about this for a moment. “I suppose not. But at the time of the crisis I had no knowledge—”
“But you did have the one piece of crucial knowledge: the absolute secrecy in which Dahr El Ahmar operates. Bourne escaped. He knows—”
“You have no idea what he knows,” she snapped. “He was in the encampment for less than fifteen minutes. He was wounded and fighting for his life. I hardly think he had time to—”
“One, Bourne is a trained agent; he sees and hears everything. Two, he knows, at the very least, that Dahr El Ahmar exists. Three, he escaped via helicopter, which means he overflew the compound.”
“That doesn’t mean he made sense of what he saw. He was too busy trying to evade the ground-to-air missile Ben David sent up after him.”
“So far as Colonel Ben David—and, I have it on good authority, Dani Amit—are concerned, Bourne’s presence at Dahr El Ahmar is more than enough to condemn him. The security breach is of the most serious level. Following this, you vanish off the grid. Rebeka, you must see where their thinking has taken them.”
“The two incidents are wholly unrelated.”
“Of course you’d say that.”
“It’s the truth.”
He shook his head. “They don’t buy it and, frankly, neither do I.”
“Look—”
“The Babylonian has been loosed, Rebeka. He’s coming for you.” He sighed. “There’s only one way to stop him.”
“Forget it,” she said. “Don’t even ask me.”
He shrugged. “Then I’m talking to a dead woman. Pity.” He threw down some money, then rose.
“Wait.”
He stood, staring down at her with an expression that made something inside her wither.
Rebeka’s mind was working furiously. “Sit.”
He hesitated, then did as she requested.
“There’s something—” She stopped herself, abruptly frightened. She had promised herself to tell no one what had happened at Dahr El Ahmar. She looked away, chewing her lower lip in uncertainty.
“What is it?” Ze’ev said, leaning forward.
Some tone in his voice—conciliatory, as if he harbored a real concern for her—caused her to turn back. This is the moment, she thought. To trust or not to trust. It’s now or never. Of course, there was an entirely different route she could take.
She took a deep breath, trying to settle herself, but nothing could stop the almost painful hammering of her heart. The not-quite-healed wound in her side began to throb.
“Rebeka, look, there are two reasons someone in your position bolts. These days, we can forget ideology. So what are we left with? Money and sex.” He regarded her with great sympathy, even during her continued silence. “I’m going to hazard a guess. There’s been only one change in your recent life—Jason Bourne. Am I right?”
Oh, my God, she thought. He believes I betrayed Mossad at Bourne’s request. But perhaps she could use that misconception.
She rose abruptly and pushed out the door, only to be slapped in the face by the storm. She stood under the eaves of the restaurant, which sheltered her partially from the stinging snow but not at all from the ferocious wind.
It wasn’t long before she sensed that Ze’ev had pushed through the door to stand close beside her.
“You see,” he said, his voice raised over the unearthly howling, “there’s nowhere to go from here.”
She allowed a long silence to build before she let out a breath and said, “You’re right.” She made herself look slightly ashamed. “It is Bourne.”
Ze’ev’s eyebrows knitted together. “What did he say to convince you? What did he do?”
“I was with him for two nights in Damascus.” Her eyes engaged fully with his. “What d’you think?”
Life at Treadstone was difficult for Dick Richards. Going from NSA, where he was revered, even by the president, to being a virtual pariah was not easy on the nerves. That, on top of his duplicitous role, was getting to him. He was not someone cut out for the field; he did not have that nerveless sort of personality those agents did. You had to be born with it; no amount of training would give it to you. The fact was, he was a physical coward. He had lived with this humiliating knowledge since he was thirteen, in summer camp, in a house commanded by a bully who, sensing Richards’s weakness, preyed on him mercilessly. Instead of fighting back, he had endured the humiliations until, at the end of the dreadful summer, he