corridor to the door to the basement. The moment she saw where he was taking her, she said, "No! Don't do this. Please. There's no need."
But Kendall, his back ramrod-straight, ignored her. When she hesitated at the security door, he grasped her firmly by the elbow and, as if she were a child, steered her down the stairs.
In due course, she found herself in the same viewing room. Tyrone was on his knees, his arm behind him, bound hands on the tabletop, which was higher than shoulder level. This position was both extremely painful and humiliating. His torso was forced forward, his shoulder blades back.
Soraya's heart was filled with dread. "Enough," she said. "I get it. You've made your point."
"By no means," General Kendall said.
Soraya could see two shadowy figures moving about the cell. Tyrone had become aware of them, too. He tried to twist around to see what they were up to. One of the men shoved a black hood over his head.
My God, Soraya said to herself. What did the other man have in his hands?
Kendall shoved her hard against the one-way glass. "Where your friend is concerned we're just warming up."
Two minutes later, they began to fill the waterboarding tank. Soraya began to scream.
Bourne asked the bombila driver to pass by the front of the hotel. Everything seemed calm and normal, which meant that the bodies on the seventeenth floor hadn't been discovered yet. But it wouldn't be long before someone went to look for the missing room-service waiter.
He turned his attention across the street, searching for Yakov. He was still outside his car, talking to a fellow driver. Both of them were swinging their arms to keep their circulation going. He pointed out Yakov to Gala, who recognized him. When they'd passed the square, Bourne had the bombila pull over.
He turned to Gala. "I want you to go back to Yakov and have him take you to Universitetskaya Ploshchad at Vorobyovy Gory." Bourne was speaking of the top of the only hill in the otherwise flat city, where lovers and university students went to get drunk, make love, and smoke dope while looking out over the city. "Wait there for me and whatever you do, don't get out of the car. Tell the cabbie you're meeting someone there."
"But he's the one who's been spying on us," Gala said.
"Don't worry," Bourne reassured her. "I'll be right behind you."
The view out over Vorobyovy Gory was not so very grand. First, there was the ugly bulk of Luzhniki Stadium in the mid-foreground. Second, there were the spires of the Kremlin, which would hardly inspire even the most ardent lovers. But for all that, at night it was as romantic as Moscow could get.
Bourne, who'd had his bombila track the one Gala was in all the way there, was relieved that Yakov had orders only to observe and report back. Anyway, the NSA was interested in Bourne, not a young blond dyev.
Arriving at the overlook, Bourne paid the fare he'd agreed to at the beginning of the ride, strode down the sidewalk, and got into the front seat of Yakov's taxi.
"Hey, what's this?" Yakov said. Then he recognized Bourne and made a scramble for the Makarov he kept in a homemade sling under the ratty dash.
Bourne pulled his hand away and held him back against the seat while taking possession of the handgun. He pointed it at Yakov. "Who do you report to?"
Yakov said in a whiny voice, "I challenge you to sit in my seat night after night, driving around the Garden Ring, crawling endlessly down Tverskaya, being cut out of fares by kamikaze bombily and make enough to live on."
"I don't care why you pimp yourself out to the NSA," Bourne told him. "I want to know who you report to."
Yakov held up his hand. "Listen, listen, I'm from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. It's not so nice there, who can make a living? So I pack my family and we travel to Russia, the beating heart of the new federation, where the streets are paved with rubles. But when I arrive here I am treated like dirt. People in the street spit on my wife. My children are beaten and called terrible names. And I can't get a job anywhere in this city. 'Moscow for Muscovites,' that is the refrain I hear over and over. So I take to the bombily because I have no other choice. But this life, sir, you have no idea how difficult it is.