The Bourne Deception (26 page)

Hart nodded. “One hundred million in each flat, and where did the money go? To fight the insurgents? To pay off the army of indigenous informers Black River claimed to get their intel from? No, you and I know, because we saw it, that ninety percent of it went into blind bank accounts in Liechtenstein and the Caymans of dummy corporations owned by Black River.”

“Now they don’t have to steal it,” Moira said with a cynical laugh,

“because Halliday is giving it to them.”

A moment later they rose and went out of the office as Humphry Bamber emerged from the men’s locker room. He was dressed in neatly pressed jeans, polished loafers, a blue-and-black-checked shirt, and a gray suede car coat.

“Is there another exit?” Moira asked him.

He pointed. “There’s an employee and delivery entrance behind the administrative offices.”

“I’ll get my car,” Moira said.

“Hold on.” Hart opened her phone. “It’s better for me to do it; my people are outside and I need to instruct them to deploy outside the front entrance to make it look as if we’re taking Bamber out that way.” She held out her hand and Moira gave her the keys. “Then I’ll go get your car and pick you two up around back. Moira?”

Moira drew her custom Lady Hawk from its thigh holster while Bamber goggled with his mouth half open.

“What the hell is going on?” he said.

“You’re getting the protection you wanted,” Hart said.

As she disappeared down the corridor, Moira motioned to Bamber, allowing him to lead her back toward the admin offices. She used her DoD-issue ID on the few managers who questioned their presence in the health club’s back office.

When they approached the rear door, she pulled out her phone and dialed Hart’s private number. Once the
DCI
answered, she said, “We’re in position.”

“Count to twenty,” Hart’s reply came in her ear, “then bring him out.”

Moira snapped shut her phone and put it away. “Ready?”

Bamber nodded even though it wasn’t really a question.

She counted off the rest of the time, then wrenched the door open with her free hand and, with her gun at the ready, moved out, presenting only her profile. Hart had stopped the white Buick directly in front of the entrance. She’d opened the near-side rear door.

Moira took a look around. They were in a remote section of the parking lot. The blacktop was surrounded by a twelve-foot Cyclone fence topped with razor wire. To the left was a row of huge lidded bins to hold the health club’s trash and recyclables between garbage pickups. To the right was the turnaround to exit the lot. Beyond rose blocks of anonymous-looking apartment and mixed-use buildings. No other vehicles were in this section of the lot, and a view of the street was blocked off by screening on the outside of the fence.

Glancing back over her shoulder, Moira made eye contact with Bamber.

“Okay,” she said, “keep your head low and get into the backseat as quickly as you can.”

Crouching down, he scuttled across the short distance from the doorway to the Buick, Moira covering him the whole way. Within the safety of the car, he scrambled across the seat to the far side.

“Get your head down!” Hart ordered as she swiveled her torso around the front bucket seat. “And keep it down no matter what.”

Then she called to Moira. “Come on, come on! What are you waiting for?

Let’s get the hell out of Dodge!”

Moira went around the back of the Buick and took one last surveillance look at the garbage bins up against the Cyclone fence. Had there been some movement there or was it just a shadow? She took several steps toward the bins, but Veronica Hart stuck her head out the window.

“Dammit, Moira, would you get into the car!”

Moira turned back. Ducking her head, she came around the back of the Buick and stopped dead in her tracks. Kneeling down, she peered into the tailpipe. There was something there, something with a tiny red eye, an
LED

that now began to blink rapidly…

Jesus
, she thought.
Oh, God!

Tearing around to the open door, she yelled, “Out! Get out now!”

She bent, pulling Bamber across the leather seat, hauling him out of the car. “Ronnie,” she called, “get out! Get out of the fucking car!”

She saw Hart turn, momentarily bewildered, then move to un-buckle her seat belt. In a moment it became clear that something was wrong because she couldn’t get free; something was in the way or the locking mechanism was malfunctioning.

“Ronnie, do you have a knife?”

Hart had a penknife out and was sawing through the material that held her fast.

“Ronnie!” Moira screamed. “For God’s sake—!”

“Get him away!” Hart yelled at her, and then, as Moira took a step toward her, “Get the fuck away!”

In the next instant the Buick went up like a Roman candle, the shock wave slamming Moira and Bamber to the blacktop, showering them with smoldering patches of plastic and spirals of hot metal that stung like bees flushed from their hive.

AHYMN
of deep-throated cathedral bells woke Bourne. Sunlight filtered through the jalousied bedroom window, fingers of pale gold striping the polished floorboards.

“Good morning, Adam. The police are after you.”

Tracy had come into the doorway, stood leaning against one side of the frame. The robust scent of fresh-brewed coffee entered with her and swirled enticingly about him like a flamenco dancer.

“I heard it on the TV earlier.” She had her arms crossed over her breasts. Her hair was still wet from the shower, slicked off her face, tied with a black velvet ribbon into a ponytail. Her face was bright, freshly scrubbed. She wore umber slacks, a cream man-tailored shirt, and shoes without heels. She looked ready for Don Fernando Hererra or whatever else the day might hold. “Not to worry, though, they don’t have your name, and the single witness, a guard at the Maestranza, didn’t—or couldn’t—give an accurate description of you.”

“He saw me in very low light.” Bourne sat up and moved across the bed.

“Sometimes in no light at all.”

“All the better for you.”

Was the smile she gave him sardonic? In his present state he couldn’t tell.

“I got breakfast, and we have an appointment to see Don Fernando Hererra at three this afternoon.”

His head still throbbed and his mouth was as dry as a desert, distinguished only by an acrid taste that was faintly nauseating.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Just after nine.”

The arm Scarface had tried to break felt better when he flexed it and the flesh wound down his back scarcely burned at all, but the pain in his chest made him wince as he wrapped the top sheet around his waist and rose out of bed.

“Perfect,” Tracy said. “A Roman senator.”

“Let’s hope by this afternoon I look more Castilian than Roman,” he said as he padded toward the bathroom, “because it will be Professor Alonzo Pecunia Zuigawho’ll be accompanying you to Don Hererra’s this afternoon.”

She gave him a curious look, then turned and went back into the living room. He closed the bathroom door behind him and ran the shower. Over the sink was a mirror surrounded by small incandescent lightbulbs: a woman’s bathroom, he thought, made for putting on makeup. Returning to the bedroom after his shower, he found a thick Turkish terry-cloth robe, which he wrapped around himself. She had covered his chest wound with a waterproof plastic layer, which he hadn’t noticed until he stepped into the stream of hot water.

When he came into the living room, Tracy was pouring coffee into an enormous cup. The small kitchen was merely a niche at one end of the single open room, which was spacious but, like the bedroom, as sparsely and anonymously furnished as a hotel room. On the wooden trestle table was the typical Andalusian workingman’s breakfast: a mug of hot chocolate and a plate of
churros
, slender twists of fried dough, dipped in sugar crystals.

Bourne pulled up a chair and he and Tracy ate their breakfast, and she let him have all the
churros
, he was still hungry when he finished. He went to the refrigerator.

“There’s nothing much in there, I’m afraid,” she said. “I haven’t been here in some time.”

Still, he found some bacon in the freezer. As he fried up the strips, she said, “Write down your size and I’ll get you some fresh clothes.”

He nodded. “While you’re at it, I need you to run an errand for me.”

Finding a pencil and scratch pad on the kitchen counter, he tore off a sheet and wrote out a list of items, along with his clothes size.

When he handed the slip of paper to her, Tracy glanced over it and said,

“Professor Zuiga, I presume?”

He nodded, tending the browning strips. “I gave you the addresses of the theatrical stores I found yesterday. We were on our way there when Scarface picked up our scent.”

She got up, grabbed her handbag, and went to the door. “This should take me about an hour,” she said. “In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your breakfast.”

After she left, Bourne took the skillet off the burner, laid the bacon on a sheet of paper towel. Then he returned to the scratch pad. The sheet he’d torn off was from the middle because he wanted to keep the top one intact. With the pencil at an extreme angle, he ran the lead lightly over the sheet. Letters began to form, the imprint of the writing left over from the last note someone—presumably Tracy—had made.

Don Hererra’s name and address came up, along with the time, 3 PM, just as she’d told him. He ripped off the sheet and put it in his pocket. That was when he noticed indentations on what was now the top sheet of the pad. He tore that off as well. Running the side of the pencil over this sheet brought up a line of numbers and letters all run together.

He ate the bacon standing beside the front window, staring out at the shimmering morning. It was still too early for people to be out at the
feria
, but the Moorish scrollwork balcony on the building across the street was garlanded in flowers and gaily colored fabric. His eyes scanned both sides of the street for anyone and anything even remotely suspicious, but nothing presented itself. He watched a young woman herd three children across the street. An old woman in black, small and bent, carried a mesh bag filled with fruit and vegetables.

Popping the last of the bacon into his mouth, he wiped his hands down on a kitchen cloth, then crossed to Tracy’s laptop, which was set up on the far end of the trestle table. It was on and he saw that she had a Wi-Fi connection to the Internet.

Sitting down in front of it, he Googled the string of numbers and letters only to get this result:

Your search—
779elgamhuriaave
—did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
  

• Try different keywords.
  

• Try more general keywords.
  

Then he saw his error, and placed spaces in the appropriate places: 779

El Gamhuria Avenue. An address, but where?

Returning to Google, he typed in “El Gamhuria Avenue” and up popped Khartoum, Sudan. Now, that was interesting. What was Tracy doing with a North African address?

He typed in the full address, including the number, which, as it turned out, belonged to Air Afrika Corporation. He sat back. Why did that name sound so familiar? There were a number of entries for Air Afrika, some of them from very odd sites, others from blogs of dubious nature, but the information he wanted came from an entry on the second page from Interpol, where speculation was cited from numerous sources that Air Afrika was owned and operated by Nikolai Yevsen, the legendary arms dealer. Ever since Viktor Anatoliyevich Bout had been arrested, Yevsen had taken his place as the largest and most powerful illegal arms dealer in the world.

Bourne rose from the chair, walked back to the window, on reflex checking the street again. Tracy was an art expert buying a Goya unknown until just recently. The price must be astronomical; maybe a handful of people in the world could afford it. So who was her client?

With church bells pealing the hour, his gaze snapped back into focus as Tracy walked into his field of vision. She was carrying a mesh shopping sack. He watched the confident rat-a-tat of her stride, the heels of her shoes rhythmically striking the pavement. A young man appeared behind her and Bourne felt his muscles tense. Halfway down the block, the young man lifted an arm, waving, and ran across the street where a young woman waited for him. They embraced as Tracy entered the building. A moment later she came through the door, put the mesh sack down on the table.

“If you’re still hungry, I bought some Serrano ham and Garrotxa cheese.”

She placed the food, wrapped in white paper, on the table. “The rest is everything you asked for.”

After he’d dressed in the light, comfortable clothes she’d chosen for him, he pored over the contents of the mesh sack, lining the items up, opening the lids, smelling the contents, and nodding to himself.

She regarded him solemnly. “Adam,” she ventured, “I don’t know what you’re involved in…”

“I already told you,” he said mildly.

“Yes, but now I see how badly you’re injured, and that man who was following us was evil looking.”

“He was evil,” Bourne acknowledged. Then he looked up at her and smiled.

“It’s part of the industry I’m in, Tracy. There isn’t the capital floating around there was in 2000, so more start-ups are chasing less money. That makes for cutthroat competition.” He shrugged. “It can’t be avoided.”

“But from the looks of you, this kind of work could send you to the hospital.”

“I’ve just got to be more careful from now on.”

She frowned. “Now you’re making fun of me.” She came and sat next to him.

“But there’s nothing amusing about that wound in your chest.”

He produced the photo he’d printed out at the Internet café, set it out between them. “To become Professor Alonzo Pecunia ZuigaI’m going to need your help.”

She held quite still, her liquid eyes studying his face for a moment. Then she nodded.

Day three of Oserov’s reign of terror brought a downpour such as no one in Nizhny Tagil could remember, and this was a city where grudges were nursed, meaning memories were as long and vibrant as the winter chill. Day three also brought other deaths, ones so brutal, so horrific that there now came to the remnants of Stas Kuzin’s people a black fear. One that crept into their bones, lodging there like a grain of polonium, eroding their confidence the way the radioactive material eats away flesh.