The Bourne Imperative

Book 10: Jason Bourne Series

by Eric Van Lustbader

Genres: Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

The man Jason Bourne fishes out of the freezing sea is near death, half-drowned, and bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound. He awakens with no memory of who he is or why he was shot – and Bourne is eerily reminded of his own amnesia.

Then Bourne discovers that the Mossad agent named Rebeka is so determined to find this injured man that she has gone off the grid, cut her ties to her agency, and is now being stalked by Mossad's most feared killer. Do the answers to these mysteries lie back in southeast Lebanon, in a secret encampment to which Bourne and Rebeka escaped following a firefight weeks ago?

The complex trail links to the mission given to Treadstone directors Peter Marks and Soraya Moore: find the semi-mythic terrorist assassin known as Nicodemo.

In the course of Bourne's desperate, deadly search for a secret that will alter the future of the entire world, he will experience both triumph and loss, and his life will never be the same.

Now everything turns on the amnesiac. Bourne must learn his identity and purpose before both he and Rebeka are killed. From Stockholm to Washington, D.C., from Mexico City to Beijing, the web of lies and betrayals extends into a worldwide conspiracy of monumental proportions.

A Hachette Audio production.

Release date: June 5, 2012

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 448

Sample

Prologue

Sadelöga, Sweden

She came out of the mist, and he was running, just as he had been for hours, days. It felt like he had been alone for weeks, his heart continually thundering inside his chest, his mind befogged with bitter betrayal. Sleep was unthinkable, rest a thing of the past.

Nothing was clear now except that she had come out of the mist after he had been certain—for the thirteenth, or was it the fifteenth, time?—that he had eluded her. But here she was, coming for him like a mythical exterminating angel, indestructible and implacable.

His life had been reduced to the two of them. Nothing else existed outside the wall of white—snow and ice and the wispy brushstrokes of fishing cottages, deep red with white trim, small, compact, containing only what was necessary. He admired such judiciousness.

The mist burned like fire—a cold fire that ran up his spine and gripped the back of his neck, just as she had gripped the back of his neck—when? Days? A week ago? When they had been in bed together, when she had been another person, his lover, a woman who quickly discovered how to make him shiver and melt with pleasure.

Half-skating across a large frozen lake, he slipped, lost his gun, which went skittering over the ice. He was about to make a lunge for it when he heard the snap of a twig, as clear and sharp as a knife thrust.

Instead, he continued on, made for a stand of shivering pines. Powdery snow sprayed his face, coating his eyebrows and the stubble of a long flight across continents. He did not dare waste another moment looking back over his shoulder to check the progress of his pursuer.

She had dogged his tracks all the way from Lebanon. He had met her in a packed, smoke-blurred bar in Dahr El Ahmar—or maybe now he would admit to himself that she had met him, that every gesture, every word out of her mouth, had been by design. Events seemed so clear now that he was on the precipice of either escape or death. She had played him instead of the other way around—he, the consummate professional. How had she so easily slipped inside his defenses? But he knew, he knew: the exterminating angel was irresistible.

Inside the pines he paused, his breath clouding the air in front of his face. It was bitterly cold, but inside his winter camo coat, he felt as if he were burning alive. Clinging to one of a maze of black tree trunks, his mind returned to the hotel room, stinking of bodies and sex, recalling the moment when she had bitten his lip, her teeth clamped down on his flesh while she somehow said, “I know. I know what you are.”

Not who, but what.

She knew. He looked around now at the city of interlocking branches, at the labyrinth of needles in which he hid. It was impossible. How could she know? And yet…

Hearing again the snap of a twig, he started, turned slowly in a circle, all his senses questing toward the direction of the sound. Where was she? Death could come at any minute, but he knew it wouldn’t be quick. There were too many secrets she needed to know, otherwise she would have killed him during one of their animalistic trysts. Nights that still gave him shivers of arousal, even though he now knew how close he had been to death. She had been playing with him—perhaps because she came to enjoy their lovemaking as much as he did. He gave a silent laugh, his lips pulled back from his teeth, more a snarl than a smile. What a fool! He kept deluding himself that there had been something between them, even in the face of the most explicit evidence to the contrary. What a spell she had woven over him! He shuddered, crouching down, contracting into himself as he pressed his spine against the rough pine bark.

Suddenly he was tired of running. It was here, in the frozen back of beyond, that he’d make his stand, even though he had no clear idea of how to emerge alive from this killing field. Behind him, he heard the insistent burble of water. In Sadelöga, you were never far from inlets of the Baltic Sea, the air mineral-thick with salt and seaweed and phosphorus.

A blur caught like a fish on a line at the corner of his eye. There she was! Had she seen him? He wanted to move, but his limbs felt as if they were filled with lead. He could not feel his feet. Turning his head slowly brought a sliver of her advancing into the tree line.

She paused, her head cocked to one side, listening, as if she could hear him breathe.

Unbidden, his tongue ran across his severely swollen lower lip. His mind raced backward, to an exhibit of Japanese wood-block prints—stately, serene, calming. All except one piece of erotica that was so famous everyone had heard of it even if they hadn’t actually seen it in person. It hung before him, a depiction of a woman in the throes of unimaginable ecstasy, administered by her octopus-lover’s dextrous eight arms. That was how he thought of his lover, his stalker. In the overheated Dahr El Ahmar hotel room he had known the depths—or heights—of the ecstasy experienced by the woman depicted in the wood-block print. In that respect, he wasn’t sorry. He had never imagined, let alone expected, that anyone could give him so much pleasure, but she had, and he was perversely grateful, even though she might very well be the death of him.

He started. She was coming now. Even though he didn’t hear her, had lost her in the maze of trees, he could feel her moving closer, drawn to him in some inexplicable manner. So he sat and waited for her to appear, considering what he would do when that happened.

He did not have long to wait. Seconds passed slowly, seeming to float away in the water somewhere behind him, at the far edge of the stand of pines. He heard her call his name, softly, gently as she had when they were lovers, entwined, locked in their own ecstasies. A shiver ran down his spine, lodged between his legs, and would not dissipate.

Still…He had resources left, surprises, chances to walk out of this killing ground alive.

Putting his head down, he slowly drew his knees up to his chest. It must have started snowing fairly hard because more and more flakes were pushing their way through the tangle of needles. Green shadows morphed to charcoal-gray, obscuring him further. Snow began to cover him, light as the flutter of angel wings. His heart thudded within his rib cage and he could feel his pulse in the side of his neck.

Still alive, he thought.

He sensed her as she slipped between the trunks of two pines. His nostrils flared, one animal scenting another. One way or another, the hunt was at an end. He felt a certain relief. Soon it would be over.

She was so close now that he heard the crunch as her boots cracked the gossamer-thin crust, plunged into the snow with each careful step. She stopped six feet away. Her shadow fell over him; he had felt it for weeks now as he traveled north by northwest in his vain attempt to dislodge her.

I know what you are, she had said, so she must know that he was on his own. There was no contact to call in case of emergency, in case of her. He had been cut out of the herd, so there would be absolutely no chance of the herd being disturbed or, worse, probed, should he be caught and put under articulated interrogation. Nevertheless, she also knew that he held secrets in the darkest corners of his mind, secrets she had been sent to extract from him in the same way a diner extracts the meat from the very top of a lobster’s claw.

Octopus and lobster. Those terms more accurately characterized the two of them than any more traditional definition.

She spoke his name again, more definitively this time, and he raised his chin off his chest to look her in the eye. She held a 10 mm EAA Witness Pistol aimed at his right knee.

“No more running,” she said.

He nodded. “No more running.”

She looked at him with a curious kindness. “Pity about your lip.”

His laugh was short and savage. “It seems I required a violent wake-up call.”

Her eyes were the color and shape of ripe olives, vivid against her Mediterranean skin and black hair pulled back tight, tucked, except for a couple of wisps, inside her hood. “Why do you do what you do?”

“Why do you?”

She laughed softly. “That’s easy.” She had a Roman nose, delicate cheekbones, and a generous mouth. “I keep my country safe.”

“At the expense of all other countries.”

“Isn’t that the definition of a patriot?” She shook her head. “But then you wouldn’t know.”

“You’re very sure of yourself.”

She shrugged. “I was born that way.”

He stirred infinitesimally. “Tell me one thing. What did you think of when we were in bed together?”

Her smile changed character subtly, but that was the extent of her answer.

“You’ll give me what I want to know,” she said. “Tell me about Jihad bis saif.”

“Not even,” he said, “on the point of death.”

Her smile changed yet again, into the one he remembered from the hotel room in Dahr El Ahmar, a secret smile, he had thought, just between the two of them, and he hadn’t been wrong. It was only the context he’d missed.

“You have no country, no innate allegiance. Your masters have seen to that.”

“We all have masters,” he said. “It’s only that we tell ourselves we don’t.”

When she took a step toward him, he flicked the knife he had been holding close to his side. The short distance between them made it impossible for her to duck out of the way. She had just begun to react when the blade penetrated her Thinsulate parka and buried itself in the flesh of her right shoulder. The EAA swung away as she was spun 45 degrees. As her arm came down, he leaped at her, taking her down flat on her back. He bore down, using his superior weight to half-bury her in the snow, sinking her into the frozen, needle-packed earth beneath.

He struck a hard blow to her jaw. The EAA lay in the snow, some distance away. Shaking off the effects of the blow, she heaved him off her. He rolled back, and before she had a chance to move, grabbed the hilt of the knife, and ground the blade deeper into the muscle of her shoulder. She gritted her teeth, but she didn’t scream. Instead, she jabbed the tips of her fingers into the cricoid cartilage of his throat. He coughed, gagging, and his hand came off the knife. Grabbing hold of it, she drew it out. Her blood glimmered darkly as it ran down the narrow blade.

Rearing back away from her, he lunged for the EAA, snatched it up and aimed it at her. When she laughed at him, he pulled the trigger, pulled it again and again. It was empty. What had she meant to do? This thought was racing through his mind when she pulled a Glock 20 out of her parka. Throwing the useless EAA at her, he lurched up, turned, and ran a patternless path through the pines, toward the water. It was his only chance now to escape her.

As he ran, he unzipped his coat, shrugged it off. In the water, it would only help to carry him down. The water would be frigid—so cold that he would have only five or six minutes to swim away to safety before the temperature penetrated to his bones, anesthetizing him. Paralysis would not be far behind, followed by death.

A shot from behind him whistled past his right knee, and he stumbled, crashed into a tree, bounced off and kept running, deeper and deeper into the woods, closer and closer to the water, whose sound rushed at him like a conquering army. He pushed himself on, panted breath streaming from him.

When he saw the first glint of the water, his heart lifted and the breath came easier in his chest. Breaking free of the pines, he lurched along snowy scrub grass sprouting between bald rocks that sloped steeply down to the sea.

He was almost there when he skidded on a slick of muck, and the second shot, meant for his shoulder, grazed the side of his head. He spun around, arms flung wide, continued blindly, legs churning as he reached the lip of land, and, blinded by his own blood, plunged down into the icy depths.

 

Gazing at the spattering of tiny islets around him, rimed in ice, Jason Bourne sat in the center of the small fishing skiff, rod in one hand, flicking it back and forth as he trolled for sea trout, pike, or perch.

“You don’t like fishing much, do you?” Christien Norén said.

Bourne grunted, brushing himself off. The brief eruption of intense snow had vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. The sky was an oppressive icy gray.

“Keep still,” Christien admonished. He held his rod at a careless angle. “You’re scaring the fish away.”

“It’s not me.” Bourne frowned, peering down into the water, which was streaked brown and green. Shadows swayed as if to an unheard melody. “Something else is scaring them away.”

“Oh, ho.” Christien laughed. “There’s an underwater conspiracy coming to light.”

Bourne looked up. “Why did you take me out here? It doesn’t appear that you like fishing much, either.”

Christien regarded him steadily for some time. At length he said, “When discussing conspiracies, it’s best to do so in a space without walls.”

“A remote location. Hence this trip outside of Stockholm.”

Christien nodded. “Except that Sadelöga isn’t quite remote enough.”

“But out on the water, this boat finally meets your requirements.”

“It does.”

“The explanation for what you and Don Fernando have been up to had better be good. What I learned from Peter Marks in DC—”

“It’s not good,” Christien said. “In fact, it’s very, very bad. Which is why—”

Bourne’s silent signal—the flat of his free hand cutting through the chill air—silenced Christien immediately. Bourne pointed at the disturbance near them, the sudden rushing curl of water arched like a dorsal fin. Something was surfacing, something large.

“Good God,” Christien exclaimed.

Abandoning his rod, Bourne leaned forward and grabbed the rising body.

1

Rumor, innuendo, intimation, supposition.” The president of the United States skimmed the buff-jacketed daily intel report across the table, where it was fielded by Christopher Hendricks.

“With all due respect, sir,” the secretary of defense said, “I think it’s a bit more than that.”

The president leveled his clear, hard gaze at his most trusted ally. “You think it’s the truth, Chris.”

“I do, sir, yes.”

The president pointed at the folder. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my long and storied political career, it’s that a truth without facts is more dangerous than a lie.”

Hendricks drummed his fingers on the file. “And why would that be, sir?” He said this without rancor; he sincerely wanted to know.

The president heaved a sigh. “Because without facts, rumor, innuendo, intimation, and supposition have a way of conflating into myth. Myths have a way of worming their way into people’s psyches, becoming something more, something larger than life. Something indelible. Thus is born what Nietzsche called his ‘superman.’”

“And you believe that’s the case here.”

“I do.”

“That this man does not exist.”

“I didn’t say that.” The president swiveled his chair around, put his forearms on his gleaming desk, steepled his fingers judicially. “What I don’t believe are these rumors of what he has done—what he’s capable of doing. No, as of this moment I don’t believe those things.”

A small silence descended over them. Outside the Oval Office, the sound of a leaf blower was briefly heard, just inside the wall of reinforced concrete barriers at the perimeter of the sacred grounds. Looking out, Hendricks could see no leaves. But then, all work in and around the White House was inherently secretive.

Hendricks cleared his throat. “Nevertheless, sir, it’s my unwavering belief that he is a significant threat to this country.”

The American flag stood curled by the right side of the window, stars rippled. The president’s eyes were half-closed, his breathing deep and even. If Hendricks didn’t know better, he’d think the president had fallen asleep.

The president gestured for the file and Hendricks slid it back to him. The president opened it, leafing through the dense paragraphs of typescript. “Tell me about your shop.”

“Treadstone is running quite well.”

“Both your directors are up to speed?”

“Yes.”

“You say that too quickly, Chris. Four months ago, Peter Marks was struck at the periphery of a car bomb. At almost the same time, Soraya Moore was hurt, involved as she was in tragic circumstances in Paris.”

“She got the job done.”

“No need to be defensive,” the president said. “I’m simply voicing my concern.”

“They’ve both been cleared medically and psychologically.”

“I’m sincerely glad to hear it. But these are unique directors, Chris.”

“How so?”

“Oh, come on, I don’t know any other intelligence directors who routinely deploy themselves in the field.”

“That’s the way it’s done in Treadstone. It’s a very small shop.”

“By design, I know.” The president paused. “And how is Dick Richards working out?”

“Integrating into the team.”

The president nodded. He tapped his forefinger ruminatively against his lower lip. “All right,” he said at length. “Put Treadstone on this business, if you must—Marks, Moore, Richards, whichever. But—” he raised a warning forefinger “—you’ll provide me with daily briefings on their progress. Above all, Chris, I want facts. Give me proof that this businessman—”

“The next great enemy to our security.”

“Whatever he is, give me proof that he warrants our attention, or you’ll deploy your valuable personnel on other pressing matters. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Hendricks rose and left the Oval Office, even more troubled than when he had entered.

 

When Soraya Moore had returned from Paris three months ago, she had found Treadstone a changed place. For one thing, because security had been breached when the car bomb that had injured Peter went off in the underground garage of the old offices, Treadstone had been moved out of Washington to Langley, Virginia. For another, the presence of a tall, reedy man with thinning hair and a winning smile.

“Who moved my cheese?” she had said to her co-director and close friend Peter Marks in a parody of a stage whisper.

Peter had barked a laugh as he embraced her. She knew he was about to ask her about Amun Chalthoum, the head of al Mokhabarat, the Egyptian secret service, who had been killed during her mission in Paris. She gave him a warning look and he bit his tongue.

The tall, reedy man, having emerged from his cubicle, was wandering over to them. He stuck out his hand, introducing himself as Dick Richards. An absurd name, Soraya thought.

“It’s good to have you back,” he said affably.

She shot him a quizzical look. “Why would you say that?”

“I’ve heard lots about you since my first day on the job, mostly from Director Marks.” He smiled. “I’d be pleased to get you up to date on the intel files I’ve been working, if you like.”

She plastered a smile on her face until he nodded to them both. When he was gone, she turned to Peter. “Dick Richards? Really?”

“Richard Richards. Like something out of Catch-22.”

“What was Hendricks thinking?”

“Richards isn’t our boss’s doing. He’s a presidential appointee.”

Soraya had glanced at Richards, who was back toiling away at his computer. “A spy in the house of Treadstone?”

“Possibly,” Peter had said. “On the plus side, he’s got a crackerjack rep at IDing and foiling cyber spying software.”

She had meant it as a joke, but Peter had answered her in all seriousness. “What, all of a sudden the president doesn’t trust Hendricks?”

“I think,” Peter had said in her ear, “that after what has happened to both of us, the president has his doubts about us.”

 

Eventually, Soraya and Peter tackled the twin traumas the two of them had suffered four months ago. It took a long time for her to get around to saying anything about Amun. Not surprisingly, Peter showed infinite patience with her; he had faith that she would tell him when she was ready.

They had just gotten a call from Hendricks, calling for a crash briefing an hour from now, so, while they had the time, the two of them by silent mutual consent grabbed their coats.

“Field assessment meeting in forty minutes,” the chubby blonde named Tricia said to Peter as they pushed out the door. Peter grunted, his mind elsewhere.

They left the offices, went out of the building and across the street where, at the edge of a park, they bought coffees and cinnamon buns from their favorite cart and, with hunched shoulders, strolled beneath the inconstant shelter of the bare-branched trees. They kept their backs to the Treadstone building.

“The really cruel thing,” she said, “is that Richards is a sharp cookie. We could use his expertise.”

“If only we could trust him.”

Soraya took a sip of her coffee, warming her insides. “We could try to turn him.”

“We’d be going up against the president.”

She shrugged. “So what else is new?”

He laughed and hugged her. “I missed you.”

She frowned as she ripped off a hunk of cinnamon bun and chewed it reflectively. “I stayed in Paris a long time.”

“Hardly surprising. It’s a city that’s hard to get out of your system.”

“It was a shock losing Amun.”

Peter had the grace to keep his own counsel. They walked for a while in silence. A child stood with his father, paying out the string on a kite in the shape of the Bat-Signal. They laughed together. The father put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. The kite rose higher.

Soraya stared at them, her gaze rising to watch the kite’s flight. At length, she said, “While I was recovering, I thought, What am I doing? Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life, losing friends and—?” For a moment, she couldn’t go on. She had had strong, though conflicting, feelings for Amun. For a time, she had even thought she loved him but, in the end, she had been wrong. That revelation had only exacerbated her guilt. If she hadn’t asked him, if he hadn’t loved her, Amun would never have come to Paris. He’d be alive now.

Having lost her taste for food, she handed her coffee and the rest of her bun to a homeless man on a bench, who looked up, slightly stunned, and thanked her with a nod. When they were out of his earshot, she said softly, “Peter, I can’t stand myself.”

“You’re only human.”

“Oh, please.”

“You’ve never made a mistake before?”

“Only human, yes,” she echoed him, her head down. “But this was a grievous error in judgment that I am determined never to make again.”

The silence went on so long that Peter became alarmed. “You’re not thinking of quitting.”

“I’m considering returning to Paris.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded.

A sudden change came over Peter’s face. “You’ve met someone.”

“Possibly.”

“Not a Frenchman. Please don’t tell me it’s a Frenchman.”

Silent, she stared at the kite, rising higher and higher.

He laughed. “Go,” he said. “Don’t go. Please.”

“It’s not only that,” she said. “Over there, in Paris, I realized there’s more to life than clinging to the shadows like a spider to its web.”

Peter shook his head. “I wish I knew what to—”

All at once one leg buckled under her. She staggered and would have fallen had Peter not dropped his food, the coffee spilling like oil at their feet, and grabbed her under the arm to steady her. Concerned, he led her over to a bench, where she sat, bent over, her head in her hands.

“Breathe,” he said with one hand on her back. “Breathe.”

She nodded, did as he said.

“Soraya, what’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know. Ever since I got out of the hospital I’ve been getting these dizzy spells.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“There was no need. They were getting less and less frequent. I haven’t had one for over two weeks.”

“And now this.” He moved his hand in a circular motion on her back in an attempt to soothe her. “I want you to make an appointment—”

“Stop treating me like a child.”

“Then stop acting like one.” His voice softened. “I’m concerned about you and I wonder why you aren’t.”

“All right,” she said. “All right.”

“Now you can’t go,” he said, only half in jest. “Not until—”

She laughed, and at last her head lifted. Tears glimmered in the corners of her eyes. “That’s my dilemma precisely.” Then she shook her head. “I’ll never find peace, Peter.”

“What you mean is you don’t deserve to find peace.”

She looked at him and he shrugged, a wan smile on his face. “Maybe what we need to concentrate on is explaining to each other why we both deserve a bit of happiness.”

She rose, shaking off his help, and they turned back. The homeless man had finished the breakfast Soraya had provided and was curled on his side on a bench beneath sheets of The Washington Post.

As they passed him they could hear him snoring deeply, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. And maybe, she thought, he didn’t.

She shot Peter a sideways glance. “What would I do without you?”

His smile cleared, widening as he walked beside her. “You know, I ask myself that all the time.”

 

Gone?” the Director said. “In what way gone?”

Above his head was engraved the current Mossad motto, excerpted from Proverbs 11:14: Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.

“She’s vanished off the grid,” Dani Amit, head of Collections, said. “Despite our most diligent efforts, we cannot locate her.”

“But we must locate her.” The Director shook his shaggy head, his livery lips pursed, a clear sign of his agitation. “Rebeka is the key to the mission. Without her, we’re dead in the water.”

“I understand that, sir. We all do.”

“Then—”

Dani Amit’s pale blue eyes seemed infinitely sad. “We are simply at a loss.”

“How can that be? She is one of us.”

“That is precisely the problem. We have trained her too well.”

“If that were the case, our people, trained as she was trained, could find her. The fact that up till now they haven’t would argue for the fact that she is something more, something better than they are.” The rebuke was as clear as it was sharp.

“I’m afraid—”

“I cannot abide that phrase,” the Director said shortly. “Her job at the airline?”

“Dead end. Her supervisor has had no contact with her since the incident in Damascus six weeks ago. I am convinced he does not know where she is.”

“What about her phone?”

“She’s either thrown it away or disabled its GPS.”

“Friends, relatives.”

“Have been interviewed. One thing I know for certain is that Rebeka told no one about us.”

“To break protocol like this—”

There was no need to finish that sentence. Mossad rules were strictly enforced. Rebeka had violated the prime rule.

The Director turned, stared broodingly out the window of his satellite office on the top floor of a curving glass-faced structure in Herzliya. On the other side of the city were the Mossad training center and the summer residence of the prime minister. The Director often came here when he grew melancholy and found the Mossad’s ant-colony central HQ in downtown Tel Aviv oppressive and enervating. Here, there was a fountain in the middle of the circular driveway and fragrant flower beds all year round, not to mention the nearby harbor with its fleet of sailboats rocking gently in their slips. There was something reassuring about that forest of masts, even to Amit, as if their presence spoke of a certain permanence in a world where everything could change in the space of a heartbeat.

The Director loved sailing. Whenever he lost a man, which was, thankfully, not all that often, he went out on his boat, alone with the sea and the wind and the plaintive cry of the gulls. Without turning back, he said rather harshly, “Find her, Dani. Find out why she has disobeyed us. Find out what she knows.”

“I don’t—”

“She has betrayed us.” The Director swung back, leaned forward, his bulk making his chair squeal in protest. The full force of his authority was explicit behind each word he spoke. “She is a traitor. We will treat her as such.”

“Memune, I wonder at the wisdom of rushing to judgment.” Amit had used the Director’s internal title, first among equals.

The bullet- and bombproof windows were coated with a film that reflected light as well as the possibility of long-range surveillance, lending the room a distinctly aqueous quality. The Director’s eyes seemed to glimmer in the office’s low lamplight like a deep-sea fish rising into the beacon of a diver’s headlamp. “It isn’t lost on me that she has been your pet project, but it is time now to admit your mistake. Even if I were inclined to give Rebeka the benefit of the doubt, we are out of time. Events threaten to overrun us. We are old friends as well as comrades in arms. Don’t force me to call in the Duvdevan.”

Invoking the specter of the Israeli Defense Forces’ elite strike unit caused a blade of anxiety to knife through Amit. It was a measure of Rebeka’s extreme importance to Israeli security that the Director would even use the threat of the Duvdevan to induce Amit to do what the Director knew full well he was reluctant