by a familiar sound: the snorting of a horse. Carefully putting Zaim down against the bole of a tree, he moved cautiously toward the sound. Perhaps five hundred meters ahead, he came upon a small clearing. In it, he saw the gray, its muzzle picking through the snowpack for something to eat. Apparently the animal had followed the course of the river down to this patch of open space. It was just what Bourne needed to carry him and Zaim to safety.
Bourne was about to move into the glade when the gray's head came up and its nostrils dilated. What had it smelled? The wind was swirling, bringing with it the scent of danger.
Bourne thought he understood, and he silently thanked the gray. Moving back into the firs, he began to circle to his left, keeping the clearing in sight as he went, keeping the wind in his face. Perhaps a quarter of the way around, he saw a spot of color, then a slight movement. Heading obliquely toward it, he saw that it was the Amhara whom he had kicked off his horse. This man must have brought the gray down here as bait, to lure them if one or both had survived the waterfall.
Keeping low, Bourne came at him fast, blindsiding him. He went down with a grunt, got his left hand free as Bourne pummeled him, drew out a curving knife. It slashed down, heading straight for Bourne's exposed side just above his kidney. Bourne rolled, his torso flicking out of range. At the same time, he locked his ankles around the tribesman's neck, back and front. With a swift, violent twist Bourne snapped the Amhara's neck.
He rose, took from the corpse the knife, sheath, and 9mm Makarov. Then he loped into the clearing, bringing the gray back to where Zaim lay. Slinging the other over the horse's sturdy back, Bourne swung up and set off through the firs, down the mountainside, heading by memory for the village.
When Soraya Moore strode into the FIU lab, Kim Lovett was still kicking around forensic evidence with Detective Overton.
Kim, having taken care of the introductions, got right down to business by bringing Soraya up to date on their case. Then she handed her the set of two porcelain teeth.
"I found these in the suite's bathtub drain," she said. "At first glance, it could easily be mistaken for a dental bridge, but I don't think it is."
Soraya, looking at the interior hollows, knew that she had seen something very similar in Deron's lab. Examining it more closely, she recognized the high quality of the workmanship. No doubt this was part of a world-class chameleon's arsenal. She had no doubt what she was holding, and to whom it belonged. She'd thought she was through with all this when Lerner kicked her butt out of Typhon, but now she knew the truth. Maybe she'd known it all along. She wasn't through with Fadi, not by a long shot.
"You're right, Kim," she said. "It's a prosthetic."
"Prosthetic?" Overton echoed. "I'm not following."
"This is a shell," Soraya told him, "used to slip over perfectly good teeth, not as a substitute for nonviable ones, but to alter the shape of the mouth and cheek line." She slipped the prosthetic on. Though it was too big for her, both Kim and Overton were astonished to see how much it changed the shape of her mouth and lips. "Which means your Jakob Silver and his brother were using aliases," she said as she spat out the teeth. To Kim, she said, "Do you mind if I borrow this?"
"Go on," Kim said. "But I'll have to log it out."
Overton shook his head. "None of this makes sense."
"It makes perfect sense if you know all the facts." Soraya shared with them the incident outside CI headquarters. "This man who passed as a Cape Town entrepreneur named Hiram Cevik is, in actuality, a Saudi who calls himself Fadi, a terrorist leader with high-level connections to what seems to be an enormous amount of money. What his real name might be we have no idea. He disappeared within blocks of where the Hummer picked him up." She held up the prosthetic.
"Now we know where he went."
Kim considered everything Soraya had told them. "Then the remains we found aren't either brother."
"I very much doubt it. The fire seems like a diversion for him slipping out of D.C. Out of the country, for that matter." Soraya went over to the shallow metal pan in which