degree of precision, but if I had to guess I'd put the amount somewhere between fifty and a hundred billion dollars."
Willard gave a low whistle. "That's enough incentive for an army to go rogue." Then he scratched the side of his head. "What I can't work out is why you're telling me all this."
"Bourne has the Solomon ring," El-Arian said. "And Treadstone's other graduate, Leonid Arkadin, is in possession of a certain laptop. Some years ago, Bourne was sent by Alex Conklin to steal the laptop from Jalal Essai. This he did, but for some reason unknown to us he never delivered it to his boss. For years we have searched for it, in vain. It seemed as if it had vanished completely. Then one of our moles sent us information through an agent of ours, Marlon Etana, that Arkadin was in possession of the stolen laptop. How did he obtain it? A Colombian drug lord by the name of Gustavo Moreno was killed in a raid a month or so ago, but the laptop containing his detailed client list was not found in his compound. Somehow Arkadin had it spirited away, and now he's used it to muscle his way into Moreno's business."
"This is the same laptop that was stolen from Jalal Essai?"
"It is."
"How in God's name did it end up with Gustavo Moreno?"
El-Arian shrugged. "A mystery we have yet to solve."
Willard mulled this over for a moment. "In any event, you can't be interested in a list of drug distributors," he said. "What's so special about this particular laptop?"
"The hard drive contains a hidden file that provides a key to the location of King Solomon's gold."
Willard appeared startled. "Are you telling me that Arkadin knows where the gold is?"
El-Arian shook his head. "I doubt Arkadin knows of the hidden file's existence. As I said, he stole it to get Moreno's client list. But even if he did know of the file, he wouldn't be able to access it. It's protected."
"Nothing is protected," Willard said, "as you yourself told me."
"Except for this file. No decryption program, no computer on earth can unlock it. There is only one way to read the file. The laptop has been fitted with a special slot. Fit the Solomon ring into the slot, an internal reader scans the engraving on the inside, and the file opens."
"So Essai had the laptop," Willard said. "What about the ring?"
"Jalal Essai had them both."
"I don't see how that makes sense. Why wouldn't he have gone after Solomon's gold himself?"
"Because even if he had opened the file, he wouldn't have been able to act on it." El-Arian, moving from sunlight to shadow, seemed to change in size as well as presence, as if there were two of him moving slightly out of sync with each other. "There is a section of the instructions missing from the file."
"And Essai doesn't have it."
"No, he doesn't."
"Who does?" Willard asked.
"It resides in a special room inside a house in Tineghir, a town in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco."
Willard shook his head. "I know it's easy to ask after the fact, but why was Essai entrusted with the ring and the laptop?"
"His family is the oldest, the most religiously strict. It was felt that he was the best choice."
There was a small silence as both men presumably contemplated the misjudgment that had been made.
"What I still don't understand is why all this is happening now. At one point, you must have had both the ring and the laptop. Why didn't you get the gold then?"
"We would have, of course," El-Arian said, "but we were unable to do so. We lacked that section of the instructions. After decades of searching, the full set was discovered by chance after an earthquake in Iran uncovered an archaeological treasure trove of information, much of it spirited out of the great Library at Alexandria before the first fire. One scroll contained information on King Solomon's court."
"And this came to light after the ring disappeared and the laptop was stolen."
"That's right." El-Arian spread his hands. "So now you see how your agenda and ours coincide. You want to bring Bourne and Arkadin together to learn once and for all who is the ultimate warrior. We want the Solomon ring and the laptop."
"Forgive me, but I don't see the relationship."
"We have tried, unsuccessfully, to get the laptop from Arkadin. I've lost every man I've sent to kill him, and I'm tired of sending people I know to a certain death.