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Lim, as soon as the fire has burned itself out, get a forensics team in there. I want a definitive ID on the driver as quickly as possible.”
      
    W ow.” Wendell Marsh, lying sweat-slick on his late boss’s bed, stared at Maricruz’s flawless back as she sat up. “When can we do that again?”
    Maricruz laughed. “Don’t mistake me for one of your call girls, Wendell.”
    “I’m just asking—”
    “I do the asking, Wendell. You would do well to remember that.”
    He watched her, a little frightened now. He was in a foreign country that gave him the willies, in a situation suddenly beyond his understanding. He waited, listening to his own breath sough in and out of his half-open mouth, until the silence weighed too heavily on him.
    “I meant no disrespect, Maricruz.”
    “Of course you did. That’s just your way. You never learned how to treat a woman.”
    Certainly not a woman like you , he thought, but wisely kept his own counsel.
    Maricruz sighed deeply. “You know, Wendell, you’ve been a bad, bad boy.”
    His heart skipped a beat, forcing him to sit up, pushing the pillow behind him. “What d’you mean?”
    “Do you really think I’d meet with you without gathering all the information on you I could? And what you did, Wendell, was embezzle money from my father.”
    Marsh’s blood pressure went sky-high; he felt an unpleasant heat traveling through his body like an invisible serpent. “I mean to pay it back, Maricruz. Every cent of it. In fact, I’ve already started to—”
    “Why did you do it?” She turned on him now, and he quailed to see the force and determination on her face. “My father trusted you.”
    Marsh hung his head. “The money wasn’t for me, it was for my sister. She married a very rich, very abusive man. She thought she loved him, thought she could change him but…” He shrugged. “I finally convinced her to leave him. In retaliation, he came down on her with a legal team that threatened her, tried to strip her of all her rights. I had no choice but to find her the best defense money could buy. The problem was, that team of lawyers and private investigators was way beyond even my means.”
    Maricruz considered this for a moment. She already knew he was telling the truth, but the mess he had made had to be cleaned up before they could go forward. “Why didn’t you ask my father for the money?”
    “You mean a loan?”
    “To fight such a man, he would have given it to you.”
    Marsh looked away. “I was ashamed.”
    “So instead you just took the money.”
    “I was sure I could pay it back before anyone discovered it, but the divorce proceedings went on longer, and then I needed more money, and it was too late.” He looked back at her. “Is it too late with you?”
    She studied him for a moment. “Wendell, do you know what aliyah means?”
    He shook his head.
    “I’m not surprised. Aliyah is a Hebrew word. It means ‘penance’ or ‘atonement.’ You will perform an aliyah for me, Wendell.”
    He felt a cooling wave of relief flush through him that obliterated the serpent of fire. “Yes, Maricruz. Of course I will.”
    “The aliyah will be difficult, Wendell, and not without a considerable amount of danger. However, when you have completed it, I will know that I can trust you again.”
      
    W ei-Wei, the Mossad agent in place whose mysterious pressing business had caused him to postpone the meet with Bourne, lived on Jiujiaochang Road, just down the block from the gaudy facade of the China Citic Bank and Fanghua pearl shop. In the distance, a clutch of ugly pastel-colored high-rises marred the skyline like chewed nails on a dowager’s scented hand.
    Wei-Wei’s apartment was on the second floor, above the China Beauty shop, where women were trying on all manner of patterned silk scarves. Bourne was still slightly numb, his digits tingly, not totally at his command. On the way he stopped at another clothes shop and, for the second time, bought a new