recently had been, someone's living quarters. The owner's daughter, judging by the posters of film and rock stars on the walls. It was brighter up here, the windows bringing in blinding sunlight. But it was also as hot as a fever. Tanirt appeared unaffected.
In the center of the floor she turned to him. "Tell me, Bourne, what do you believe in?"
He did not answer.
"The hand of God, fate, destiny? Any of those things?"
"I believe in free will," he said at last, "in the ability to make one's own choices without interference, either by organizations or by fate, whatever you want to call it."
"In other words, you believe in chaos, because man doesn't control anything in this universe."
"That would mean I'm helpless. I'm not."
"So neither Law nor Chaos." She smiled. "Yours is a special path, the path between, where no one before you has gone."
"I'm not sure I'd put it that way."
"Of course you wouldn't. You're not a philosopher. How would you put it?"
"Where is this going?" he said.
"Always the soldier, the impatient soldier," Tanirt said. "Death. It's going toward the nature of your death."
"Death is the end of life," Bourne said. "What else is there to know about its nature?"
She went to one of the windows and opened it. "Tell me, please, how many of the enemy can you see?"
Bourne stood beside her, feeling her intense warmth as if she were an engine that had been running at speed for a long time. From this lofty vantage point, he could see a fair number of streets and observe their occupants.
"Somewhere between three and nine. It's difficult to be precise," he said after several minutes. "Which one will kill me?"
"None of them."
"Then it will be Arkadin."
Tanirt cocked her head. "This man Arkadin will be the herald, but he won't be the one who kills you."
Bourne turned to her. "Then who?"
"Bourne, do you know who you are?"
He had been with her long enough to know that he wasn't expected to answer.
"Something happened to you," Tanirt said. "You were one person, now you're two."
She put the flat of her hand on his chest and his heart seemed to skip a beat - or, more accurately, to race past it. He gave a little gasp.
"These two people are incompatible - in every way incompatible. Therefore, there is a war inside you, a war that will lead to your death."
"Tanirt - "
She raised the hand that had been on his chest, and he felt as if he had sunk into a bog.
"The herald - this man Arkadin - will arrive in Tineghir with the one who will kill you. It is someone you know, perhaps very well. It is a woman."
"Moira? Is her name Moira?"
Tanirt shook her head. "An Egyptian."
Soraya!
"That... that doesn't seem possible."
Tanirt smiled her enigmatic smile. "This is the conundrum, Bourne. One of you can't believe it is possible. But the other one knows that it is possible."
For the first time in Bourne's memory he felt truly helpless. "What am I to do?"
Tanirt took his hand in hers. "How you react, what you do, will determine whether you live or die."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
HAPPY BIRTHDAY," M. Errol Danziger said when he reached Bud Halliday by phone.
"My birthday was months ago," the secretary of defense said. "What do you want?"
"I'm waiting in my car downstairs."
"I'm busy."
"Not for this."
There was something in Danziger's voice that stopped Halliday from blowing him off. Halliday called his assistant and told him to clear his calendar for the next hour. Then he grabbed his overcoat and took the stairs down. As he walked across the White House grounds, the guards and Secret Service agents nodded to him deferentially. He smiled at the ones he knew by name.
Climbing into the back of Danziger's car, he said, "This better be good."
"Trust me," Danziger said. "It's better than good."
Twenty minutes later the car pulled up at 1910 Massachusetts Avenue, SE. Danziger, who was sitting nearer the curb, stepped out and held the door open for his boss.
"Building Twenty-seven?" Halliday said as he and Danziger trotted up the steps of one of the modern brick buildings in the General Health Campus complex. "Who died?" Building 27 housed the office of the district's chief medical examiner.
Danziger laughed. "A friend of yours."
They passed through two levels of security and took the oversize stainless-steel-clad elevator down to the basement. The elevator reeked of bleach and a sickly-sweet smell Halliday was loath to identify.
They were expected. An assistant coroner, a slight, bespectacled man with a nose like a