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Chapters (54)
  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Prologue
  4. PART ONE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. PART TWO
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. PART THREE
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. PART FOUR
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. Chapter Thirty-three
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Epilogue
  52. ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
  53. Critical Praise for Robert Ludlum
  54. Copyright Page

Now he returned the wooden-handled garrote to his breast pocket, and dragged the limp body of the driver out of the car. He popped the trunk, and arranged the body around the spare tire, the jumper cables, and a surprising number of blankets. It was important to get the man out of the driver’s seat as quickly as possible; he had learned this from unpleasant experience. The incontinence that sometimes followed a sudden death could cause a soiled seat. Not something he cared to deal with at a time like this.

His RIM BlackBerry communicator purred from deep in his breast pocket. It would be an update on the location of the subject.

He glanced at his watch. He had little time remaining.

His subject had less.

The voice in his earpiece gave him the precise coordinates of his subject, and as the passenger-turned-driver maneuvered the taxicab toward Dupont Circle he was given regular updates as to her movements. Timing was essential if he was to succeed.

The crowd in front of the department store was sparse; the subject was wearing a navy peacoat, a gold silk neckerchief knotted loosely around her throat, a shopping bag with the elegant logo of the upscale store in one hand.

It was the only thing he was conscious of, the figure of the black woman, growing larger and larger as he gunned the motor of the cab and then, abruptly, swung the steering wheel far to the right.

As the cab lurched onto the sidewalk, shrieks of disbelief filled the air, blending into a sound that was almost choral.

A curious intimacy, again, the woman’s startled face coming close and closer to his, like a lover leaning forward into a kiss. As the front bumper smashed into her body—he was traveling at close to fifty miles per hour—her upper body smashed onto the hood of the cab, and only when he braked did her body fly forward, vaulting through the air and finally landing on the pavement of the busy intersection, where a Dodge van, despite its squealing brakes, left tire tracks on her broken body.

The cab was recovered later that day, abandoned in an alley in Southwest Washington. It was an alley that, in the best of times, was littered with the brown and green shards of broken beer bottles, the clear curved glass of crack vials, the translucent plastic of hypodermics. The local youth treated the cab as just another found object. Before the car was recovered by the authorities, it had been stripped of its hubcaps, its license plate, and its radio. Only the body in its trunk was left undisturbed.

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen