The Bourne Deception (30 page)

Don Hererra laughed. “Fausto, do you hear this, do you hear this man?” He hunched forward so his face was close to Bourne’s. “Are you threatening me, Stone? Because the air in my house is vibrating in such a way.”

Now there was a stiletto in his hand. The hilt was inlaid with jade, the long blade as tapered as Hererra’s own fingers. He tipped the blade forward until the point touched the skin above Bourne’s Adam’s apple.

“You should know I don’t take kindly to threats.”

“What happens to me is irrelevant,” Bourne said.

“The seńorita’s blood will be on your hands.”

“Surely you know how powerful my employers are. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”

“Unless I change my business practices.”

Bourne felt the shift in Hererra’s thinking even before he said it. He was no longer denying his business in arms shipping. “That’s correct.”

Don Hererra sighed and made a sign to Fausto, who removed the muzzle and holstered the Beretta at the small of his back. Then he threw the stiletto onto the sofa cushion and, slapping his thighs, said, “I think, Seńor Stone, we both could do with a walk in the garden.”

Fausto unlocked the French doors, and the two men stepped out onto the flagstone path. The garden was an octagon embraced by the sturdy arms of the house. There was a small grove of lemon trees and, in the center, a tiled fountain in the Moorish style shaded by a palm tree. Here and there stone benches were scattered, both in sunlight and in dappled shade. The air was perfumed by the lemon trees, whose new leaves were emerging like butterflies from their winter cocoons.

Because it was cool out, Don Hererra indicated a bench in full sun. When they were seated side by side, he said, “I must admit Yevsen surprises me; he sends a man who is not only not a thug, but possesses uncommon wisdom.” His head inclined a fraction, as if he were tipping his hat to Bourne. “How much is that Russian sonovabitch paying you?”

“Not enough.”

“Yes, Yevsen is one cheap bastard.”

Bourne laughed. His great gamble had paid off: He had his answer. Wayan was being supplied by Nikolai Yevsen. Scarface had been sent by Yevsen, following Bourne all the way from Bali where he’d first tried to kill him. He still didn’t know why Yevsen wanted him dead, but he knew he’d just moved a giant step closer to finding out. He had a line on who Don Fernando Hererra really was: Nikolai Yevsen’s competitor. And if he convinced Hererra Bourne could be turned, Hererra would give up everything he knew about Yevsen, which just might include what Bourne needed to know.

“Certainly not enough for having a stiletto held to my throat.”

“No one regrets that necessity more than I do.”

The fissures in Hererra’s face were set in high relief as they were struck by the slanting rays of the sun. There was a fierce pride in that face he’d held in abeyance while he was playing the part of the gentleman, a granite toughness Bourne could appreciate.

“I know about your history in Colombia,” he said. “I know how you took on the Tropical Oil Company.”

“Ah, yes, well, that was a long time ago.”

“Initiative never fades away.”

“Listen to you.” The Colombian gave him a shrewd sideways look. “Tell me, should I sell my Goya to Seńorita Atherton?”

“She has nothing to do with me,” Bourne said.

“A chivalrous thing to say, but not quite true.” Hererra held up an admonishing finger. “She was all too ready to take the Goya at an unfair price.”

“That just makes her a good businessman.”

Hererra laughed. “Indeed, it does.” He delivered another sidelong glance.

“I suppose you won’t tell me your real name.”

“You saw my passport.”

“Now is not the time to insult me.”

“What I meant is that one name is as good as another,” Bourne said,

“especially in our line of work.”

Hererra shivered. “Christ, it’s getting cold.”

He stood up. The shadows had grown long during their talk. Only one sliver of sunlight remained on the top of the west-facing wall, while day turned into fugitive night.

“Let’s rejoin the lady businessman, shall we, and find out how badly she wants my Goya.”

M. Errol Danziger, the NSA’s current deputy director of signals intelligence for analysis and production, was watching three monitors at once, reading real-time progress reports from Iran, Egypt, and Sudan, and taking notes. He was also periodically speaking into the microphone of an electronic headpiece, using terse signals-speak he himself had devised, even though he was speaking on an NSA-approved encrypted line.

His Signals Sit Room was where Secretary of Defense Bud Halliday found Danziger analyzing and coordinating intel, and directing the far-flung elements of this blackest of black-ops missions. To those who worked most closely with him, he was known, ironically, as the Arab, because of the unceasing missions he’d successfully run against Muslim extremists of all sects.

No one else was in the room, just the two men. Danziger glanced up briefly, gave his boss a deferential nod before returning to his work. Halliday sat down. He didn’t mind the curt treatment that in anyone else would warrant a severe dressing-down. Danziger was special, deserving of special treatment. In fact, this manifestation of intense concentration was a sign that all was well.

“Give me your nibble, Triton,” Danziger said into the mike.
Nibble
was signals-speak for “timetable.”

“High and tight. Bardem is on the money.”

Triton was Noah Perlis’s ops designation, the secretary knew. The software program Bardem, which analyzed the changing field situation in real time, was his responsibility.

“Let’s get started on the Final Four,” the Arab said.
Final Four:
the mission’s last phase.

Halliday’s heart skipped a beat. They were close to the finish line now, nearing the biggest power coup any American official had ever managed. Damping down his excitement, he said, “I trust you’ll be finished with this session soon.”

“That all depends,” Danziger replied.

Halliday moved closer. “Make it happen. We’re going to see the president in just under three hours.”

Danziger’s attention shifted from his screens and he said, “Triton, five,” into the mike before he flipped a switch, temporarily muting the connection. “You met with the president?”

Halliday nodded. “I brought your name up and he’s interested.”

“Interested enough to meet with me, but it’s not yet a done deal.”

The defense secretary smiled. “Not to worry. He’s not going to choose either of the candidates from inside CI.”

The Arab nodded; he knew better than to question his boss’s legendary influence. “We have a bit of a situation developing in Egypt.”

Halliday hunched forward. “How so?”

“Soraya Moore, whom we both know, and Amun Chalthoum, the head of the Egyptian intelligence service, have been snooping around the farm.”

The farm
was signals-speak for a current mission’s theater of operations.

“What have they found?”

“The original team was on vacation when their orders were transmitted. Apparently they were pissed off enough about their leave being cut short that their destination was overheard.”

Halliday scowled. “Are you saying that Moore and Chalthoum are aware that the team was headed for Khartoum?”

Danziger nodded. “This problem has to be nipped in the bud; there’s only one solution.”

Halliday was taken aback. “What? Our own men?”

“They violated security protocol.”

The secretary shook his head. “But still—”

“Containment, Bud. Containment while it’s still possible.” The Arab leaned forward and patted his boss on the knee. “Just think of it as another regrettable case of friendly fire.”

Halliday sat back, scrubbed his face with the heels of his hands. “It’s a good thing humans have an infinite capacity for rationalization.”

About to swivel back to his screens, Danziger said, “Bud, this is my mission. I devised Pinprick, I designed it down to the last detail. But you approved it. Now, I know for a fact you’re not about to let four disgruntled sons-of-bitches put our heads in the crosshairs, are you?”

DON
FERNANDO
HERERRA
paused at the French doors, lifted a finger, and his eyes engaged Bourne’s. “Before we go inside, I must make one thing clear. In Colombia, I have taken part in the wars between the military and the indigenous guerrillas, the struggle between fascism and socialism. Both are weak and flawed because they seek only control over others.”

The blue shadows of Seville lent him a keen and hungry look. He was like a wolf that has sighted the face of his prey.

“I and others like me were trained to kill a victim who has been stripped of his defenses, who lacks any capacity for response. This act is known as the perfect crime. Do you understand me?”

He continued to peer into Bourne’s face as if he were connected to an Xray machine. “I know you weren’t hired by Nikolai Yevsen or by Dimitri Maslov, his silent partner. How do I know this? Though I know almost nothing about you—including your real name, which is the least important thing about you—I know that you are not a man to hire himself out to anyone. Instinct tells me this, instinct steeped in the blood of my enemies, whose eyes I have looked into many times as I spilled their guts, men who measure their intelligence solely by their zeal for torture.”

Bourne felt galvanized. So Yevsen and Maslov were partners. Bourne had met Maslov several months ago in Moscow, when the
grupperovka
boss was in the midst of a war with a rival mob family. If he was now in partnership with Yevsen it could only mean that he’d won the war and was consolidating his power. Was it Maslov, not Yevsen, who was behind the attack on him?

“I understand,” Bourne said. “You’re not afraid of Yevsen or Maslov.”

“Nor am I interested in them,” Hererra said. “But I am interested in you. Why have you come to see me? It’s not my Goya, and it’s not the seńorita inside, beautiful and desirable though she may be. What, then, do you want?”

“I was followed here by a Russian hitman with a scar on one side of his neck and a tattoo of three skulls on the other.”

“Ah, yes, Bogdan Machin, better known as the Torturer.” Hererra tapped the tip of his forefinger against his lower lip. “So it was you who killed that bastard at the Maestranza yesterday.” He gave Bourne an appraising look.

“I’m impressed. Machin had left a litter of the dead and maimed behind him like a train wreck.”

Bourne was similarly impressed. Hererra’s intel was swift and excellent. Bourne unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his chest wound. “He tried to shoot me dead in Bali. He bought a Parker Hale Model Eighty-five and a Schmidt and Bender Marksman Two scope from Wayan. It was Wayan who gave me your name. He said you recommended Machin to him.”

Hererra’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You must believe me, I never knew.”

Bourne grabbed the Colombian by the shirtfront and slammed him against the French doors. “Why should I believe you,” he said into Hererra’s face,

“when the man who bought the Parker Hale couldn’t be Machin because he had gray eyes?”

At that moment Fausto appeared from a doorway on the other side of the garden, his gun aimed at Bourne, who pressed his thumb into Hererra’s Adam’s apple and said, “I have no desire to hurt you, but I will know who tried to kill me on Bali.”

“Fausto, we’re all civilized individuals here,” Hererra said as he stared into Bourne’s eyes, “put away your weapon.”

When the young man had obeyed, Bourne released the Colombian. At that moment the French door opened and Tracy appeared. She looked at each of the three men in turn, and said, “What the hell is going on?”

“Don Hererra is about to tell me what I need to know,” Bourne said.

Her gaze returned to the Colombian. “And the Goya?”

“It’s yours at the full asking price,” Hererra said.

“I’m prepared to—”

“Seńorita, don’t try my patience. I will have my full asking price, and with what you tried to pull you’re lucky at that.”

She pulled out her cell. “I’ll have to make a call.”

“By all means.” Hererra raised a hand. “Fausto, show the seńorita to a place where she can have privacy.”

“I’d rather be outdoors,” Tracy said.

“As you wish.” The Colombian led the way back inside. When Fausto had shut the door and disappeared down the hallway, he turned to Bourne and very softly and very seriously said, “Do you trust her?”

Harvey Korman had just bitten down into an indifferent roast beef and Havarti on rye when, to his astonishment, Moira Trevor and Humphry Bamber exited
GWU

Hospital’s ER entrance without his partner, Simon Herren, anywhere in sight. Korman threw down a twenty, got up, tossed on his padded jacket, and swung out the coffee shop door, which was almost directly across the street from the hospital entrance.

It was a quirk of luck that Korman was small and slightly pudgy, with round cheeks and almost no hair, more Tim Conway than his namesake. Still, with his physique and unprepossessing manner no one would take him for a private intelligence operative, let alone a member of Black River.

What the fuck?
he thought as he carefully tailed the pair down the street.
Where the hell is Simon?
Noah Perlis had told him that the Trevor woman was dangerous but, of course, he’d taken the warning with a couple of grains of salt. Not that he or Simon had ever met Trevor, which was why Perlis had chosen them for this assignment, but everyone in Black River knew Perlis had a thing for Moira Trevor, tinting his judgment of her. He never should have been her handler while she was working for Black River. In Korman’s judgment, Perlis had made some key mistakes, including using Veronica Hart as a stalking horse, so Trevor wouldn’t think ill of him when he’d abruptly taken her off mission.

That was all in the past, however. Korman needed to concentrate on the present. He turned the corner and looked around, bewildered. Bamber and Trevor had been half a block ahead of him. Where the hell had they gone?

This way! Hurry!” Moira guided Bamber into the corner lingerie shop. It had two doors, one on New Hampshire Avenue, NW, the other on I Street, NW. She spoke on her cell as she led him through the shop and out the opposite door, back onto New Hampshire Avenue, where they lost themselves in the crowd. Five minutes later and four blocks away the Blue Top taxi Moira had called pulled up to the curb and they quickly climbed in. As it accelerated away, she pushed Bamber down in the seat. Just before she herself slid down she caught a glimpse of the man who had been following them, a man who looked comically like Tim Conway. There was nothing comical, however, about his grim expression as he spoke into his cell, no doubt apprising Noah of the situation.