The Bourne Deception (36 page)

Asphyxiated in her own home was not a fate Moira had ever contemplated. Her eyes were watering and she was slightly dizzy from holding her breath for so long. Holstering her Lady Hawk, she hauled out a low stepstool leaning against the rear wall, shook it open in the center of the small space, and climbed up until she could reach the ceiling—which, like the rest of the closet, was lined with cedar. A buzzing in her ears had already begun, product of a lack of oxygen, as she felt for the outline of the square in the cedar planking that was invisible from below. Tracing a line to the center of the square, she used both fists to pop the hatch she’d built in the closet. Pulling out the laptop, she hauled herself up into the crawl space in which she stored her bulky winter items in the summer months. Crawling across the bare plywood floor, she jammed the hatch back into place, collapsed onto her side, and gasped air into her burning lungs.

She gave a little moan, knowing she couldn’t afford to stay there long: The carbon monoxide would seep into the crawl space soon enough. The small storage area gave out onto a jungle gym of beams and raised roof joists, across which she now crawled with great care.

Because she had built the storage space herself, she was familiar with every square inch of it. On either end, as the building code specified, there were venting triangles. She didn’t know whether they’d be large enough for her to squeeze through, but she knew she had to try.

The distance wasn’t great, but, sweating, her heart pounding, it seemed to take her forever to traverse the treacherous expanse of crisscrossing beams to the far end, where a glimmer of streetlight announced the venting triangle. That light drew her like a moth, growing in size as she approached it. Still, when she arrived her heart sank, because it didn’t look nearly large enough to accommodate her body. She hooked her nails around the nether side of the metal band that described the triangle, and pulled it off. A freshet of cool night air brushed her face like a lover’s caress, and for a moment she lay still, simply breathing.

Setting the triangle carefully aside, she slid headfirst through the opening. Now she could see that she was at the rear of her house, overhanging the narrow alley where she and her neighbors put out their garbage for the sanitation truck that weekly rumbled down the cobbles, disturbing the residents’ sleep every Thursday at daybreak.

The glow of her neighbors’ security lights streamed harshly into the interior, illuminating the laptop as she placed it on the lip of the opening. It was then that she saw to her consternation and alarm that the laptop’s hot-swappable hard drive was missing. She checked and checked again as one will when a wallet is lost, because the enormity of the loss is such a shock.

Then with a grunt of disgust, she shoved the laptop away. All this effort, putting herself in harm’s way—and for nothing!

With her hands against the brickwork of the facade, she began to lever herself out, rounding her shoulders to get them through the triangle at its widest point, no mean trick—she had barely enough room to squeeze them through. Then she grasped one of the decorative stone outcroppings to increase her leverage. Now she had to contend with her hips, which didn’t look as if they’d make it.

She was struggling with this problem of solid geometry when she heard a sound directly below her. Twisting her neck painfully, she saw that her rear door was opening. Someone was coming out—a figure in black. Though he looked severely foreshortened because of her awkward view from above, she could see him clearly enough. He stood motionless on the back step, peering around.

Now she turned back to her task, desperate to free herself. Resettling her grip on the ornamental stone lip, she redoubled her effort to haul her lower body through the opening. Unfortunately, this resulted in her hips getting stuck in the triangle. Belatedly, she saw how she should have twisted to have the best shot at getting through. She tried to push herself back, to free herself, but she was stuck. Down below, the man in black had lit a cigarette. By the way he was glancing up and down the alley, she figured that he must be waiting for the Lincoln Town Car to pick him up. As she continued to struggle, she saw him pull out his cell phone. Any moment now he would punch in his confederates’ number and, finding they didn’t answer, would take off on his own. With him would go her hard drive and any chance of hacking into Noah’s Wi-Fi network.

The man in black put his phone to his ear, and she willed herself to relax, to exhale, so her body would soften. There! She was free! Now she twisted her hips and hauled herself through. Hanging precariously from the stone ornamentation, she heard the man’s soft voice spiral up to her, along with the smoke from his cigarette. Knowing she was out of time, she let go and, plunging downward, landed on him.

As he fell to the cobbles, his cell phone flew through the air, shattering some feet away. His head hit the street with a sickening smack.

Jolted, aching, and slightly disoriented, she crawled over the corpse of the man in black, and in so doing found his cell phone. She stared at it curiously for a moment. If she was holding his cell, what had flown through the air?

Staggering to her feet, she zigzagged her way to where the splintered plastic and metal shards lay shining on the cobbles. On one of the small rectangular pieces was a thick red lightning bolt from upper right corner to lower left, symbol of all of Black River’s specially designed hardware.

“Oh, God,” she moaned. “No.”

Sinking to her knees, she scooped up the disks, remnants of her hard drive, which was split open, unusable, unsalvageable, utterly ruined.

WHILE
BOURNE
AND
TRACY
waited in the first-class lounge in Madrid for their Egyptair flight, Bourne excused himself and walked toward the men’s room. He passed the shiny ranked shelves displaying newspapers from all over the world, in a great many languages, but all with more or less the same screaming headlines: “Negotiations Break Down,” or “On The Brink,” or “Last Diplomatic Hope Gone,” but which invariably included the words “Iran” and

“War.”

When he was out of Tracy’s sight, he extracted his cell and called Boris’s number. There was no answer, no ring even, which meant that Boris had his phone off. He thought a moment and, walking to the windows so that he was away from everyone, he scrolled through his phone’s address book until he brought up another Moscow number.

“What the hell?” a crusty old voice shouted down the line.

“Ivan, Ivan Volkin,” he said. “It’s Jason Bourne, Boris’s friend.”

“I know whose friend you are. I’m old, not senile. Besides, you caused enough mayhem when you were here three months ago to remain indelible in the mind of an Alzheimer’s patient.”

“I’m trying to get in touch with Boris.”

“What else is new?” Volkin said tartly. “Why don’t you try calling him instead of bothering me?”

“I wouldn’t be calling you if he answered his cell.”

“Ah, then you don’t have his satellite phone number.”

Which meant, Bourne thought, that Boris had returned to Africa. “You mean he’s back in Timbuktu?”

“Timbuktu?” Volkin said. “Where did you get the idea Boris had been in Timbuktu?”

“From Boris himself.”

“Hah! No, no, no. Not Timbuktu. Khartoum.”

Bourne leaned against the glass chilled by the fierce air-conditioning of the lounge. He felt as if the ground were sliding out from under his feet. Why did all strands of the spider’s web lead to Khartoum?

“What’s Boris doing in Khartoum?”

“Something he doesn’t want you, his good friend, to know about.” Volkin laughed throatily. “Obviously.”

Bourne took a stab in the dark. “But you know.”

“Me? My dear Bourne, I’m retired from the world of the
grupperovka
. Who’s got the bad memory, me or you?”

There was something very wrong with this conversation, and a moment later Bourne knew what it was. Surely, with all his contacts, Volkin must have heard of Bourne’s “death.” And yet there was no surprise in his voice when Bourne announced himself, no awkward questions being asked. Which meant he already knew Bourne had survived the attack on Bali. That meant Boris knew.

He tried another tack. “Do you know a man named Bogdan Machin?”

“The Torturer. Of course I know him.”

“He’s dead,” Bourne said.

“No one’s going to mourn, believe me.”

“He was sent to Seville,” Bourne said, “to kill me.”

“Aren’t you already dead?” Volkin said with an ironic twist.

“You knew I wasn’t.”

“Me, I still have a couple of brain cells left, which is more than could be said for the late, unlamented Bogdan Machin.”

“Who told you? Boris?”

“Boris? My dear fellow, Boris went on a weeklong drunk when he heard—

through me, I might add—that you’d been killed. Now, of course, he knows better.”

“So Boris wasn’t the one who shot me.”

The explosion of laughter obliged Bourne to hold the phone away from his ear for a moment.

When Volkin had calmed down, he said, “What an absurd notion! You Americans! Where on earth did you come up with that bit of insanity?”

“Someone in Seville showed me surveillance photos of Boris in a Munich beer hall with the American secretary of defense.”

“Really? On what planet would that happen?”

“I know it sounds crazy but I heard a tape of them talking. Secretary Halliday ordered my death and Boris agreed to it.”

“Boris is your friend.” Volkin’s tone had turned deadly serious. “He’s Russian; friendships don’t come easily to us, and they’re never betrayed.”

“It was a barter,” Bourne persisted. “Boris said he wanted Abdulla Khoury, the head of the Eastern Brotherhood, killed in return.”

“It’s true Abdulla Khoury was killed recently, but I assure you that Boris would have no reason to want him dead.”

“Are you certain?”

“Boris has been working on anti-narcotics, yes? You know this or, at least, must have surmised as much. You’re a clever one, hah! The Eastern Brotherhood was funding its Black Legion terrorists through a drug pipeline that ran from Colombia to Mexico to Munich. Boris had someone inside the cartel who provided him with the other end of the pipeline, namely Gustavo Moreno, a Colombian drug lord living in a vast hacienda outside Mexico City. Boris attacked the hacienda with his elite team of FSB-2 men and shut Moreno down. But the really big prize—Moreno’s laptop with the details of every inch of the pipeline—eluded him. What happened to it? Boris spent two days searching every inch of the compound, to no avail, because before he died Moreno insisted it was in the hacienda. It wasn’t, but Boris being Boris caught a whiff of a strange scent.”

“Which eventually brought him to Khartoum.”

Volkin deliberately ignored the comment. Perhaps he thought the answer was self-evident. Instead, he said: “Do you have the date this alleged meeting between Boris and the American secretary took place?”

“It was stamped on the photos,” Bourne said. When he told Volkin, the Russian said emphatically, “Boris was here with me for three days, including that date. I don’t know who was sitting down with the American secretary of defense, Bourne, but as sure as Russia is corrupt it wasn’t our mutual friend Boris Karpov.”

“Who was it then?”

“A chameleon, certainly. Do you know any, Bourne?”

“Besides myself, I do. But, unlike me, he’s dead.”

“You seem certain of that.”

“I saw him fall from a great height into the water off the Port of Los Angeles.”

“That is not the same as death. By God, you, of all people, should know,”

Volkin said.

A cold chill swept down Bourne’s spine.

“How many lives have you had, Bourne? Boris tells me many. I think it must be the same with Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.”

“Are you telling me that Arkadin didn’t drown? That he survived?”

“A black cat like Arkadin has nine lives, my friend, possibly even more.”

So it was Arkadin who’d tried to kill him on Bali. Though the picture had suddenly become clearer, there was still something wrong, something missing.

“Are you sure of all this, Volkin?”

“Arkadin is now the new head of the Eastern Brotherhood, how’s that for being sure?”

“All right, but why would he hire the Torturer when he seems to want so desperately to kill me himself?”

“He wouldn’t,” Volkin said. “The Torturer is much too unreliable, especially against a foe like you.”

“Then who hired him?”

“That, Bourne, is a question even I cannot answer.”

Having decided to take to the field himself in an effort to find the missing Metro police officers, Peter Marks was waiting in front of the bank of elevators to take him to the ground floor when an elevator door slid open. The only person inside was the enigmatic Frederick Willard, up until three months ago the Old Man’s mole inside the NSA’s Virginia safe house. The older man was, as usual, dapper, urbane, utterly self-contained. He wore an impeccable gunmetal-gray, chalk-striped three-piece suit over a crisp white shirt and a conservative tie.

“Hello, Willard,” Marks said as he stepped into the elevator. “I thought you were on leave.”

“I got back several days ago.”

From Marks’s point of view, Willard was remarkably well suited to play the role of steward in the safe house, evincing an old-school professorial air, musty and rather boring. It wasn’t difficult to see how he melted into the woodwork. Being invisible made it so much easier to eavesdrop on intimate conversations.

The door slid shut and they descended.

“I imagine it’s been difficult getting back into the swing of things,”

Marks said, more to be polite to the older man than anything else.

“Frankly, it was like I was never gone.” Willard glanced over at Marks with a grimace, as if he’d just come from the surgeon’s office and his agony was of such magnitude that he could not hide it. “How did your interview with the president go?”

Surprised that Willard knew about it, Marks said, “Well enough, I suppose.”

“Not that it matters, you’re not getting the post.”