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are logical by nature die out there, wondering how it could be that their life is ending because the mission went off the rails in an insane twist the brief never covered. In the field, other, hidden factors are always at play. Factors the authors of the brief know nothing about.”
    “I’ll be careful, Bill. I told you.”
    “I want you to come home,” he said, “with or without Bourne’s head. But don’t you dare tell Howard I said that.”
    “I make it a rule never to tell Howard squat.”
    “Good girl.” He nodded. “And you’re sure you’re up to this?”
    “Bill,” she said, rising, “if I had a cock it would always be up.”
    She went to the door, turned to him, and smiled sadly. “You see how emotions fuck things up? We’re fearing for each other’s lives instead of concentrating on the situation at hand.”

5
    I t was a terrible thing to wake up in Doha alone and in despair.
    “If you look for them,” El Ghadan had told Bourne before they slipped the hood over his head and took him away, “you will not find them.”
    It was a terrible thing to wake up in Doha alone and helpless.
    “If you look for them,” El Ghadan had said just before they had dumped him at the edge of the desert, “I will kill them myself, one slow inch at a time.”
    The heat was intense, the sun blinding, almost hallucinatory. And perhaps it actually was, because, squinting into the white glare, Bourne saw an Arabian oryx, its body white as milk, legs black as night, a splash of the same ebon hue pigmenting the center of its muzzle. The oryx stared at him with a rare intelligence, as if to say, You fool. Then it tossed its head, as if in contempt, its magnificent, impossibly long horns seeming to rake the sky.
    Bourne blinked and it was gone. Picking himself up off the dusty verge, he commenced to walk in the direction of the city, until, hours later, a truck stopped beside him. Drenched in sweat, he climbed in beside the driver.
    “What are you doing way out here in the middle of nowhere?” the driver said in Arabic, as he ground the gears out of neutral.
    “Having a conversation with an oryx,” Bourne replied, staring ahead at the city towers shimmering in the heat haze.
    *  *  *
    The Museum of Weaponry, in the Al Luqta quarter of Doha, was not open to the public. A letter was required from the Museums Authority before entrance could be gained. No such permission was needed, however, for Abdul Aziz, or Zizzy, as his intimates called him.
    Abdul Aziz lived like a pasha. Not a modern-day pasha, whatever that might be, but a pasha from the opulent days of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, for him the Ottoman Empire was in many ways still alive, for his shipping empire extended as far as the Ottomans’ had in its heyday. It was almost as lucrative, too, though in reality, what could compare to the wealth of the Ottomans? Apart, of course, from that of the Vatican.
    Zizzy was an Arab who successfully negotiated the modern world while keeping the seven pillars of Islamic culture vibrantly alive. How he managed this almost superhuman metaphysical juggling act was a mystery to all, including his family. But everyone who knew him was grateful for his ability to defy gravity, as it were.
    Jason Bourne was one of those. Bourne had encountered Zizzy some years earlier when both men were on assignment in the Sinai. Zizzy was inspecting a site he was considering buying. Bourne had penetrated the site in pursuit of a small cadre of terrorists who had blown an Egyptian church sky high, killing almost a hundred worshipping Copts, many of them women and children.
    Zizzy had proved his astonishing marksmanship by shooting dead the last of the terrorists who had lain in wait for Bourne. Zizzy had used an L115A3 AWM sniper rifle, arguably the best in the business. One shot, one kill. That was the sniper’s code—one, as it turned out, Zizzy adhered to religiously.
    Zizzy was fiercely loyal, well connected, a man with an irreverent