Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (40 page)

He bowed his head slightly and risked a slight smile as he handed over a wrapped parcel. “Please accept this inadequate token of my sorrow.”

“You’re too kind.” She took the package, laid it squarely on her lap, and watched Li’s face. She was waiting, and she thought he knew she was waiting.

At last he said, “May I sit with you a moment?”

She gestured. “Please.”

He sat primly, almost as if he were a turtle, trying to pull its arms and legs into its shell. It was an almost womanly attitude she found repellent.

“Is there anything I can do, Senator?”

“Thank you, no.”
Curious
, she thought.
He’s acting like a mainland Chinese, not like a Chinese American.
Because of the special nature of this man and the relationship with him laid out for her by Chris Hendricks, she felt the need to explore that notion. “And please call me Ann.”

“You are far too kind,” Li said, ducking his head again.

What is his behavior telling me?
she asked herself.

Li looked across the room to the flowers bedecking the console table against the opposite wall. “I have many memories of your husband, Senator.” He paused a moment, as if debating whether or not to continue. “Memories that might, in time, be shared.”

Now comes the light
, she thought. But it was altogether unclear whether he was on an official mission. Her heart leaped at the thought that it might be a personal one, that something had happened between Li and Charles that might have changed their dynamic or, if not that, Li’s own goals as opposed to his government’s.

“You know, Mr. Li, I have my own memories of my husband. It might be pleasant to hear some others.”

Li’s thin shoulders twitched infinitesimally. “In that event, I would welcome the opportunity to invite you to tea, Senator, when you feel up to it, of course.”

“How kind of you, Mr. Li.” She had to be careful here, very careful. “I have a full slate of subcommittee and budgetary meetings that have been thrown into disarray. You understand.”

“I do, Senator. Of course I do.”

She turned on a wistful expression. “On the other hand, it would certainly be refreshing to speak of matters unrelated to Capitol Hill.” She fingered Li’s present. “Perhaps this evening, after my vigil. I have allotted time for a meal.”

Li Wan looked hopeful. “Possibly dinner then.”

“Yes,” she said, ratcheting up her wistful expression. “That would be lovely.”

“I’ll pick you up here if you like.” Mr. Li’s smile was like a sliver of moon. “You have only to decide when.”

Sam Anderson spent fifteen fruitless minutes sending Treadstone personnel to scour the building for Richards. 

Not having found him, he recalled his people and sent out a BOLO via FBI and the Metro Police with a priority tag.

Then he joined the assembled IT team, which was feverishly working to ID the virus that was overrunning the Treadstone servers, rendering them useless. He had peeled off one man, Timothy Nevers, who he assigned to check the software keylogger and its hardware companion that he had placed on the terminal Richards was working from, to parse the results.

Peter had chosen the perfect person to be his right-hand man. Anderson was neither ambitious nor complacent. He was wholly focused on the job he had been given to do, and he did it better than anyone else at Treadstone. Unlike many of his colleagues in the clandestine services, he was a people person, an exemplary manager. Those who followed his orders did so without question. They believed in him, believed he could work them out of any trouble they ran into.

This virus was trouble of an exponential order. Every minute the IT team delayed in identifying its basic algorithm, the virus broke through and annihilated another barrier. The on-site Treadstone servers were beginning to look like Swiss cheese; there was almost nothing to pull off them, even if the IT team could find a way around or through the virus, which, as of now, they couldn’t.

“Keep on it,” Anderson said, and, turning to Tim Nevers, said, “Speak to me of the unspeakable.”

“You got that right,” Nevers said. “This guy Richards is a freakin’ genius at software programming. I’m still getting a good look at the Trojan, which, by the way, he definitely coded and entered into the system.”

“What about the virus?”

Nevers scratched his scalp. He was just over thirty and already shaved his head because he was going bald. “Yeah, well, it’s the freakin’ velociraptor of viruses, that much I can tell you.”

“Not helpful,” Anderson said. “You have to give me something I can export to the other IT guys.”

“I’m doing my best,” Nevers said, fingers blurred over the keyboard.

“Do better.”

That was what Anderson’s father had always said to him, not unkindly, but in a way that made Anderson
want
to do better, not simply to please his father, though, of course, that loomed large. Doing better made him succeed, as well as learn something important about himself. Anderson’s father was a military man—intelligence— who ended up at Central Intelligence. He had revamped many of their clandestine intel gathering methods and was rewarded by being kicked out because of a bad heart. He hated idling at home and died sixteen months after he had been let go. His bosses all said, “We told you so,” but Anderson knew what his father had known: At home he couldn’t “do better.” Useless he went to sleep one night and never woke up. Anderson was quite certain his father knew that, too, as he drifted off.

“Got something!” Nevers said. “I’ve coded out the virus algorithm from the Trojan’s. It’s endlessly regenerative. Amazing, really.”

“What I want to know, Nevers, is whether it can be stopped.”

“Intervention,” Nevers said, nodding. “Not the way you’d ever think to nullify a virus, which is what makes it so clever. You have to flip a switch, so to speak, from
inside
the algorithm.”

Anderson hitched his chair forward in order to get a better view. “So do it.”

“Not so fast,” Nevers said. “The virus is encoded with traps, failsafe mechanisms, and dead ends.”

Anderson groaned. “One step forward, two steps back.”

“Better than being in the dark.” Nevers hit the enter key. “I’ve just transmitted everything I’ve discovered to the rest of the IT team.” He turned, grinned at his boss. “Let’s see if they can do better.”

Anderson grunted.

“Richards destroyed the software keylogger just before he activated the virus. That’s the kernel of the problem. The software recorded only the partial code, not all of it. We can’t stop it until we have the code in its entirety.”

“Don’t you have enough information to make an informed assumption, intervene, and flip the algorithmic switch?”

“I could,” Nevers said, “but I won’t.” He turned to Anderson. “Look, this virus is so full of thorns—triggers, in other words—that if I don’t know precisely what I’m doing, I could inadvertently set off one of these triggers and make things infinitely worse.”

“Worse?” Anderson said, incredulous. “What could be worse than all our data being obliterated?”

“The motherboards overloading, the servers becoming nothing more than a pile of silicon, rare earths, and fused wire circuits. Vital enciphered communications would be down for God knows how long.”

Then he grinned. “But on the bright side...” He pulled a tiny oblong from beneath the desk and held it up. “Richards didn’t find the Bluetooth transmitter. If he downloaded anything from outside, it’ll be recorded right here. Even better, we’ll be able to back-trace it to the source.”

When Nicodemo saw Don Fernando Hererra, he froze, still as a statue. 

Hererra was dead—at least, according to Martha Christiana. But she had lied, and now she herself was dead, lying on the cobbled street on the Île Saint-Louis. Whether she had jumped from the fifth-floor window or had been pushed was impossible to say. But what was irrefutable was the presence of Hererra talking to the cops while the photos were being taken and fingerprints lifted from the crime scene.

Craning his neck up, Nicodemo could see through the windows detectives treading through what must be Hererra’s apartment. More flashbulbs lit up the night, more fingerprints were being taken up there in every room. What they expected to find, Nicodemo had no idea, nor was he interested. His focus, which had been on Martha Christiana, the woman Maceo Encarnación had told him to pick up and bring back to the waiting jet, now shifted to Hererra. There was nothing Nicodemo could do for Martha Christiana anymore, but there was certainly something he must do about Hererra.

Retreating to the shadows around the corner, he pulled out his mobile and called Maceo Encarnación.

“I’m standing around the corner from Don Fernando Hererra’s apartment,” he said when he heard the other man on the end of the line. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but Martha Christiana is dead.”

He pulled the mobile away from his ear at the tirade of curses that emanated from it.

“Fell or pushed, I don’t know which,” he continued when Maceo Encarnación had expended the depths of his shock and rage. “I’m sorry, truly. But we have other matters to occupy us. Martha Christiana lied about Hererra being dead....I know, I am too....But he’s standing big as life....Of course I’m sure it’s him.”

Nicodemo spent the next few moments absorbing every word Maceo Encarnación spoke, at the end of which he said, “You’re sure that’s what you want me to do.”

More withering talk, during which Nicodemo began his preparation for the assignment Maceo Encarnación had given him.

“Get it done,” Maceo Encarnación concluded. “You have twentyfour hours. After that, if you haven’t appeared, I take off without you. Clear?”

“Perfectly,” Nicodemo said. “I’ll be back before the deadline. Count on it.”

Disconnecting, he pocketed his mobile and walked back to the crime scene. Martha Christiana had been loaded into the ambulance. Hererra was still talking with the detectives. He spoke, they nodded. One of them scribbled notes as fast as he could.

Nicodemo flipped out a cigarette, lit up, and smoked languidly as he continued to assess the scene. When, at length, the detectives were finished with Hererra, they gave him their cards, and he turned away, returning to his building. Nicodemo watched as he pressed a four-digit code into the panel on the right side of the huge wooden doorway to the street.

He waited until the detectives left and, amid the slowly dispersing crowd of onlookers, stood confronting the panel, which consisted of ten raised brass buttons, numbered one through zero. Taking out a small vial, he blew a white powder, finer than talcum, over the buttons. The powder adhered to the residue of oil left by Hererra’s fingerprints, revealing four whitened buttons. On the third combination, the door’s lock clicked open, and he stepped inside.

He stood for a moment in the cobbled inner courtyard where, centuries before, horse-drawn carriages full of passengers would pull up and liveried footmen would fall over themselves to help the patricians down and into their residence. Now, of course, many people lived in the building, but the history remained, rising off the cobbles like steam from the horses’ glistening flanks.

Two women, one young, one older, were lounging against a wall beside the front door, discussing the tragedy. The older one smoked. Nicodemo took out a cigarette and, approaching them, asked for a light.

“Terrible thing.” The young woman shuddered. “Who can sleep after something like that?”

“Now the street will be clogged with the morbidly curious,” the older woman said, shaking her head.

Nicodemo nodded sympathetically. “Why would someone throw themselves out a window?” he wondered out loud.

“Who can say?” The older woman shrugged her meaty shoulders. “People are mad, that’s my position.” She sucked down more smoke. “Did you know the poor girl?”

“A long time ago,” Nicodemo said. “We were childhood friends.”

The older woman looked sorrowful. “She must have been so unhappy.”

Nicodemo nodded. “I thought I could help her, but I arrived too late.”

“Do you want to go upstairs?” the younger woman said, as if struck by a sudden idea.

“I don’t want to disturb Señor Hererra.”

“Oh, I’m sure he could use the sympathy. Here.” She crossed to the door, slipped her keys out of her pocket. She pressed the attached disc against a metal pad beside the door and it buzzed open.

Nicodemo thanked her and went into the vertical vestibule. A large iron staircase curved upward, and he ascended. The building was eerily still, as if everyone in it were holding their breath in horror. No one was on the stairs, all the apartment doors were firmly closed, as if against a rapidly spreading disease.

Don Fernando’s floor was likewise deserted. He went soundlessly down the landing to stand in front of the apartment. He listened but heard nothing.

Then he put his ear to the door.

Inside the apartment, Don Fernando could still smell the stale clothes of the cops and detectives. He felt as if his home had been broken into. He didn’t want to smell anything but Martha Christiana’s distinctive scent, and he resented deeply the official invasion. He stood stiffly, his back ramrod-straight, and tried to separate his thoughts from his emotions.

He was responsible for Martha Christiana’s death, he had no doubts on that score. He had manipulated her, put her in what turned out to be an untenable position, pitting himself against Maceo Encarnación. He had twisted the screws on her, slowly to be sure, but in the end that hadn’t mattered. In the end, she hadn’t been able to follow either him or her employer. She had taken the only way out that would give her surcease. Perhaps this had been her destiny from the moment she was born into a loveless home and ran away, she thought, to save herself. Instead, she had run pell-mell toward her destiny, toward this apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, toward her death on the cobbles of the Quai de Bourbon.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with him, but he did not believe that. In Martha Christiana desire had warped her destiny. Now she was dead. Turning in a slow circle, he felt the lack of her, as if there were more shadows in these rooms he had come to know so well, as if there were suddenly another room he had never noticed and hadn’t explored, a room whose contents frightened him.