might never have noticed the changes-that's how minute most of them were. Papers on her desk not quite as neatly stacked as they had been, an old-fashioned chrome stapler at more of an angle than she had left it, her colored pencils in a slightly different order, the books on the shelves not precisely aligned as she had ordered them.
The first thing she did was go through every room and closet in the house to make sure she was alone. Then she checked all the doors and windows. None had been broken or damaged in any way. Which meant someone either had a set of keys or had picked the lock. Of the two possibilities, the second seemed far more probable.
Next, she returned to the library and slowly and methodically examined every single item there. It was important to her to get a sense of who had invaded her house. As she moved from shelf to shelf, she imagined him stalking her, poking, prodding in an attempt to ferret out her innermost secrets.
In a sense, considering the business she was in, it seemed inevitable that this would happen. However, that knowledge did not assuage the dread she felt at this rape of her private world. She was defended, of course, heavily so. And as scrupulously careful here as she was at the office. Whoever had been here had found nothing of value, of this she was certain. It was the act itself that gnawed at her. She had been attacked. Why? By whom? Questions without immediate answers.
Forget that glass of water now, she thought. Instead she poured herself a stiff single-malt scotch and, sipping it, went upstairs to her bedroom. She sat on the bed, kicked off her shoes. But the adrenaline still racing through her body would not allow her respite. She got up, padded over to her dresser, set her old-fashioned glass down. Standing before the mirror, she unbuttoned her blouse, shrugged it off. She went into the closet, swept a line of other blouses out of the way to get to the free hanger. Reaching up, she stopped in midmotion. Her heart beat like a trip-hammer and she felt a wave of nausea wash over her.
There, swinging from the chrome hanger rod, was a miniature hangman's noose. And caught in that noose, pulled tight as if around the condemned's neck, was a pair of her underpants.
"They wanted to know what I knew. They wanted to know why I was following them." Martin Lindros sat with his head against the specially configured airplane seat's back, eyes half closed. "I could've kicked myself. They made me in Zambia, my interrogator told me. I never knew it."
"No use beating yourself up," Bourne said. "You aren't used to fieldwork."
Lindros shook his head. "No excuse."
"Martin," he said gently, "what's happened to your voice?"
Lindros winced. "I must have been screaming for days. I don't remember." He tried to twist away from the memory. "I never saw what it was."
His friend was still in a kind of post-rescue shock, that was clear enough to Bourne. He'd asked twice about the fate of Jaime Cowell, his pilot, as if he hadn't heard Bourne the first time or had not been able to absorb the news. Bourne had chosen not to tell him about the second helicopter; time for that later. So much had happened so quickly, they'd hardly been able to say another word to each other, until now. The moment they'd taken off from Ras Dejen, Davis had radioed Ambouli airport in Djibouti for a CI physician. For that choppy flight, Lindros had been lying down on a stretcher, moving in and out of a fitful sleep. He was thinner than Bourne had ever seen him, his face haggard and gray. The beard altered his appearance in an unsettling way: It made him look like one of his captors.
Davis, a hotshot pilot if ever there was one, had wrestled the helicopter into the air, raced through the eye of a needle: a rent in the howling wind at the side edge of the front. He skillfully followed it down the mountain, out into clear weather. Beside him, Lindros lay, white-faced, the mask feeding him oxygen clamped firmly in place.
During the pulse-quickening flight, Bourne tried to keep the ruined, pitted face of Alem's brother out of his mind. He wished he could have buried the boy himself. That had proved impossible, so he'd done the next best thing. Imagining the stone cairn Davis had erected,