out of the cave. There came the clangor of booted feet, the clash of metal weapons, the grunting of men lifting heavy loads. Then he heard the rattling engine of the truck as it backed up to the cave mouth.
A moment later, Abbud ibn Aziz himself came to blindfold him.
He squatted down beside Lindros. "Don't worry," he said.
"I'm beyond worry," Lindros said in a cracked voice he barely recognized as his own.
Abbud ibn Aziz fingered the hood he was about to place over Lindros's head. It was sewn of black cloth and had no eyeholes. "Whatever you know about the mission to murder Hamid ibn Ashef, now would be the time."
"I've told you repeatedly, I don't know anything. You still don't believe me."
"No." Abbud ibn Aziz placed the hood over his head. "I don't."
Then, quite unexpectedly, his hand briefly gripped Lindros's shoulder.
What is this, Lindros wondered, a sign of empathy? It was amusing in a way that was currently beyond him to appreciate. He could observe it as he observed everything these days, from behind a sheet of bulletproof glass of his own manufacture. That the pane was figurative made it no less effective. Ever since he'd returned from his private vault, Lindros had found himself in a semi-dissociative state, as if he couldn't fully inhabit his own body. Things his body did-eating, sleeping, eliminating, walking for exercise, even talking occasionally with Abbud ibn Aziz-seemed to be happening to someone else. Lindros could scarcely believe that he had been captured. That the dissociation was an inevitable consequence of being locked up for so long in his mental vault-that the state would slowly dissolve and, finally, vanish-seemed at the moment to be a pure pipe dream. It seemed to him that he would live out the rest of his life in this limbo-alive, but not truly living.
He was pulled roughly to his feet, feeling as if he were in a dream imagined over and over during his time out on the placid lake. Why was he being moved with this kind of haste? Had someone come after him? He doubted that it was CI; from snippets he'd overheard days ago, he knew that Dujja had destroyed the second helicopter of agents sent to find him. No. There was only one person who had the knowledge, tenacity, and sheer skill to get to the summit of Ras Dejen without being killed: Jason Bourne! Jason had come to find him and bring him home!
Matthew Lerner sat in the rear of Golden Duck. Though it was in Chinatown, the small restaurant was featured in many D.C. guidebooks, which meant it was frequented by tourists and shunned by locals, including members of Lerner's peculiar covert fraternity of spies and government agents. This, of course, suited him just fine. He had a good half a dozen meeting places he'd ferreted out around the district, randomizing his rendezvous with conduits and certain other individuals whose services he found useful.
The place, dim and dingy, smelled of sesame oil, five-spice powder, and the bubbling contents of a deep fryer from which egg rolls and breaded chicken parts were periodically lifted.
He was nursing a Tsingtao, drinking it out of the bottle because he found the oily smudges on the water glasses disturbing. Truth to tell, he'd much rather have been swigging Johnnie Walker Black, but not now. Not with this particular rendezvous.
His cell phone buzzed and, opening it, he saw a text message: "OUT THE BACK ONTO 7 ST. FIVE MINUTES."
Deleting it at once, he pocketed the phone and returned to polishing off his Tsingtao. When he'd finished, he plunked some bills onto the table, got his coat, and walked to the men's room. He was, of course, familiar with the restaurant's layout, as he was with the sites of all his rendezvous. After urinating, he turned right out of the men's room, went past a kitchen clouded with steam, alive with shouted Cantonese and the angry sizzle of huge iron woks over open flames.
Pulling the rear door open, he slipped through onto 7th Street. The late-model Ford was as anonymous as you could get in D.C., where all government agencies were mandated to buy American when it came to transportation. With a quick look in either direction, he opened the rear door and slid inside. The Ford began to roll.
Lerner settled back into the seat. "Frank."
"Hello, Mr. Lerner," the driver said. "How's tricks?"
"Tricky," Lerner replied drily. "As usual."
"I hear you," Frank nodded. He was a beefy, bullnecked man, carrying