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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

“His twin sister. Told you sisterhood was powerful.” She started to massage the loose skin beneath her left collarbone. “The fabulous Demarest twins. Double trouble. Terrorized fucking Fairfield growing up. The Mobius morons never even knew that Alan brought me into the picture.” As she spoke, her circular movements became deeper, more insistent, seemingly responding to an itch deep beneath the skin. “So if you think I’m going to ‘give him up,’ as you so artfully put it, you’d better think again.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Janson said.

“What is she doing?” Jessica asked in a low voice.

“We always have a choice.” Lang’s movements grew smaller, more focused; with her fingers she started to dig at something to the side of her clavicle. “Ah,” she said. “That’s it. That’s it. Oh, that feels so much better … .”

“Paul!” Jessica shouted. She made the inference a moment before he did. “Stop her!”

It was too late. There was the barely audible pop of a subdermal ampoule, and the woman threw her head back, as if in ecstasy, her face flushing to a purplish red. She made a soft, almost sensual panting sound, which subsided into a gargling sound deep in her throat. Her jaw fell open, slack, and a rivulet of saliva dribbled from the side of her mouth. Then her eyes rolled up, leaving only the whites visible through her half-parted lids.

From unseen speakers, the ghostly voices sang.

Gaudete in ilio,
quem no viderunt in terris multi,
qui ipsum ardenter vocaverunt.
Gaudete in capite vestro.

Janson put a hand on Márta Lang’s long neck, feeling for a pulse, even though he knew there would be none. The signs of cyanide poisoning were hard to miss. She chose death before surrender, and Janson was hard-pressed to say whether it represented an act of courage or one of cowardice.

We always have a choice, the dead woman had said. We always have a choice. Another voice, from decades past, joined it in his memory: one of the Viet Cong interrogators, the man with the steel-framed glasses. Not to decide is to decide.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-eight

The console on the secretary-general’s desk chimed. Helga’s voice: “I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s Mr. Novak again.”

Mathieu Zinsou turned to the high commissioner for refugees, a former Irish politician who combined a vigorous style with a fair amount of loquacity; she was currently feuding with the under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, who had been conducting turf battles with unyielding and unhumanitarian fervor. “Madame MacCabe, I’m terribly sorry, but this is a call I must take. I think I’ve understood your concerns about the strictures coming from the Department of Political Affairs, and I believe that we can address them if we all reason together. Ask Helga to arrange a meeting among the principals.” He rose and bowed his head in a courtly gesture of dismissal.