her face. -Good news. We‘ve recovered the black box.
Soraya, standing with Amun Chalthoum inside one of the tents his people had erected adjacent to the crash site, was grateful for the interruption. Being with Amun in such close quarters had put her nerves on overload. That there were so many layers to their relationship-professional, personal, ethnic-was difficult enough, but they were also frenemies, ostensibly on the same side but underneath fierce competitors for intel, bound to governments with vastly different agendas. So their dance was complex, often dizzyingly so.
— What does it tell you? Chalthoum said.
Delia gave him one of her Sphinx-like looks. -We‘ve just begun analyzing the instrument data from the aircraft‘s last moments, but from the cockpit conversation it‘s perfectly clear the crew didn‘t see an aircraft of any kind. However, the copilot saw
— A missile, Soraya said while looking into Amun‘s face. She wondered whether he already knew this. He would if al Mokhabarat had been complicit in the incident. But Chalthoum‘s dark face remained impassive.
Delia was nodding. -A ground-to-air missile seems the likeliest scenario at this stage.
— So, Chalthoum said in his native tongue even before Delia had left the tent, — it seems as if the United States isn‘t protecting us from extremists, after all.
— I think it would better serve both of us to start figuring out who was responsible, she said, — rather than pointing fingers, don‘t you?
Chalthoum watched her carefully for a moment, then nodded, and they retreated to opposite sides of the tent to update their superiors. Using the Typhon satellite phone she‘d brought with her, Soraya called Veronica Hart.
— This is bad news, Hart said from halfway around the world. -The very worst.
— I can only imagine how Halliday is going to run with it. While Soraya spoke, she assumed Chalthoum was briefing the Egyptian president with the same information Delia had provided. -Why do good things happen to bad people?
— Because life is chaos, and chaos can‘t distinguish between good and evil. There was a slight pause before Hart continued. -Any news on the MIG?
She meant the Iranian militant indigenous group.
— Not yet. We‘ve had our hands full with the crash. The scene is horrific and the conditions are next to intolerable. Besides, I haven‘t had three minutes to myself.
— This can‘t wait, Hart said firmly. -Finding out about the Iranian indigenous group is your primary mission.
The two of you came to me, Suparwita said. -Holly was extremely agitated, but she wouldn‘t tell you why.
Bourne stared at the spot where the body must have ended up, where his new beginning lay shattered. Why had he been so foolish to think that his past was dead and buried when, even here in a remote corner of the world, it existed like an egg waiting to hatch? Another piece of his past, another death. Why was he always entwined with loss of life?
He continued to stare down the three steep staircases with the undulating dragon banisters. He tried to remember that day: if he‘d rushed to this spot, if the woman was already a bloody heap far away as he flew down the steps. He strained to recall anything about the incident, but his mind was enclosed by a gray fog, thick as the stone dragons, fierce and implacable guardians of the temple. Was the fog protecting him from the terrible event here?
The pain in his chest, his constant companion in the aftermath of the shooting, accelerated, spreading out into his entire torso.
His face must have gone gray because Suparwita said, — This way.
They made their way from the lintel, from the chasm of the past, and walked back onto the temple plaza and into the cool shade of a towering wall into which was carved an army of demons being opposed by the local dragon spirits.
Bourne sat and drank water. The healer stood, hands folded together, waiting patiently. Bourne was reminded of what he liked so much about Moira-
no fussing, no coddling, just nononsense responses.
At length, Suparwita said, — You came because of Holly. She‘d heard about me, I suppose.
As he breathed into the pain, taking long, deep, controlled breaths, he said, — Tell me what happened.
— There was a shadow over her, as if she‘d brought something horrible with her. Suparwita‘s liquid eyes rested gently on Bourne‘s face. -She‘d always been placid, she said. No, that‘s the wrong word-lacking in affect, that‘s better. But now she was terrified. She was up at night, she started at loud noises, she bit her nails to the quick. She told me that she never sat near windows. When you went to a restaurant she‘d insist on a table in the rear, where she could look out at the rest of the room. Then you said that even in the shadows, you could see that her hands shook. She‘d tried to hide it by holding her glass in a death grip, but you would see it when she reached for a fork or pushed her plate away.
The soft thrum of an airplane engine could be heard briefly interrupting the bird chatter. Then all was still again. On an adjacent mountainside, thin streamers of smoke rose from the burn-off fires at the periphery of the rice paddies.
Bourne gathered himself. -Perhaps she had somehow come un-hinged.
The healer nodded uncertainly. -Possibly. But I can tell you that her terror came from a real source. I think you knew that, too, because you weren‘t humoring her, you were trying your best to help her.
— So she could have been running from something or someone. What happened next?
— I cleansed her, Suparwita said. -She was entangled with demons.
— Yet she died.
