The Bourne Deception (42 page)

“I believe this concludes our business, Ms. Atherton.” At that moment, his cell rang and he excused himself. His brows knit together. “When?” he said into the phone. “Who? What do you mean alone? Dammit, didn’t I—All right, don’t fucking move until I get there!” He cut the connection, his face dark.

“Is something wrong?” Tracy asked.

“Nothing that need concern you.” Noah managed a smile through his annoyance. “Please make yourself comfortable here. I’ll come and fetch you when it’s safe.”

“Safe? What do you mean?”

“There’s an intruder in the building.” Noah was already hurrying across the room to the door. “Not to worry, Ms. Atherton, it seems we already have him cornered.”

We were picked up the moment we arrived in
KRT
,” Amun Chalthoum said as he and Soraya drove into the city.
KRT
was the aviation acronym for the Khartoum International Airport, which had been appropriated by the Sudanese themselves.

“I saw them,” Soraya said. “Two men.”

“They were joined by two others.” Chalthoum glanced in the rearview mirror. “All four of them are in a gray 1970s-vintage Toyota Corolla three car-lengths behind us.”

“The men at the terminal looked local.”

Chalthoum nodded.

“I find that odd, because no one locally knew we were coming to Khartoum.”

“Not true.” A small, secretive smile played about the Egyptian’s lips.

“As the head of al Mokhabarat, I was obliged to tell a superior I was leaving the country, if only temporarily. The man I chose to tell is the one I have suspected for some time of secretly undermining me.” His eyes once again flicked to the image in the rearview mirror. “Now, at last, I have my proof of his treachery. Nothing will stop me from bringing one of these miscreants back to Cairo to denounce him.”

“In other words,” Soraya said, “we need to let them catch us.”

Amun’s smile broadened. “Catch up to us,” he corrected, “so we can catch them.”

The poker game had given up the ghost an hour ago, leaving the house off Dupont Circle redolent of the scents of men—and women—hard at play: cigar ash, leftover pizza, stale but honest sweat, and the ephemeral but powerful odor of money.

Four people draped themselves over purple velvet art deco sofas: Willard, Peter Marks, Police Commissioner Lester Burrows, and Reese Williams, whose house, surprisingly, this turned out to be. Between the four principals, on a low table, sat a bottle of scotch, a bucket half full of ice, and four fat old-fashioned glasses. Everyone else had packed up what was left of their poker stakes, if any, and had staggered home. It was just after twelve on a night without either moon or stars, the clouds so thick and low that even the lights of the district were reduced to murky smudges.

“You won the last hand, Freddy,” Burrows said, addressing the ceiling as he reclined against the sofa’s curled back, “but you haven’t told me the consequences of seeing you after the final round of raises. I was tapped out, so you put in for me. Now I owe you.”

“I want you to answer Peter’s question about the two missing officers.”

“Who?”

“Sampson and Montgomery,” Marks provided helpfully.

“Oh, them.”

The commissioner was still staring absently at the ceiling while Reese Williams, her legs curled up under her, watched the scene with an enigmatic expression.

“There’s also the matter of a motorcycle cop shooting a man named Jay Weston, which caused the accident Sampson and Montgomery were dispatched to investigate,” Marks continued. “Only there was no investigation; it was strangled.”

Everyone in the room knew what “strangling an investigation” meant.

“Freddy,” Burrows said to the ceiling, “is this also part of what I owe you?”

Willard’s eyes were fixed on Reese Williams’s unexpressive face. “I ponied up a ton of money for you to see me, Lester.”

The commissioner sighed and finally relinquished his gaze from the ceiling. “Reese, you know you have a rather large crack up there.”

“There are cracks throughout this house, Les,” she said.

Burrows seemed to consider this for some time before saying to the other two men, “Be that as it may, there will be no cracks in the information shared here. Whatever I share with you gentlemen is strictly off the record, not for attribution, and however the hell else you want to say it.” He sat up abruptly. “Bottom line: Afterward I will not only repudiate the statement, I’ll go out of my way to prove it false and to run into the ground those who claimed I did say it. Are we clear?”

“Perfectly,” Marks said, while Willard nodded his assent.

“Detectives Sampson and Montgomery are currently fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.”

“Are they really fishing,” Marks asked, “or are they dead?”

“Jesus Christ, I talked to them yesterday!” Burrows said heatedly. “They wanted to know when they could come home. I told them there was no rush.”

“Lester,” Willard said, “they’re not in Idaho on your dime.”

“Uncle Sam has deeper pockets than I do,” the commissioner conceded.

Willard was watching emotions crossing like clouds across Burrows’s face.

“Precisely what piece of Uncle Sam?”

“No one told me, and that’s the truth,” Burrows grumped, as if no one told him anything of any real importance. “But I remember the representative’s name, if that’s of any help.”

“At this stage,” Willard said heavily, “anything might prove useful, even a pseudonym.”

“Well, dammit, no one tells the truth in this town!” Burrows lifted an accusing finger. “And let me tell you two right now that no police officer of mine shot your Mr. Weston, of that I’m damn sure. I conducted my own investigation into that allegation.”

“Then someone was impersonating one of your police officers,” Willard said calmly, “to point everyone in the wrong direction.”

“You spooks.” Burrows shook his head. “You live in your own world with its own rules. Christ, what a tangled web!” He shrugged, as if shaking off his consternation. “That name, then. The man who made the arrangements for my detectives said his name was Noah Petersen. That ring a bell, or was he just blowing spook smoke up my ass?”

Bourne had parted company with the lurker, as his cousin’s cousin had first ensured that both truckers were inside the building, unloading crates, then furtively led the way into the building through the service entrance. Grabbing hold of the truck’s rear door handle, he vaulted up, grabbing on to the rim of the top and rolling his body onto the truck’s roof. By climbing onto the refrigeration unit, he was able to reach a concrete abutment on the building’s facade, by which means he gained the setback along the second floor. Using the spaces between the concrete slabs, he picked his way farther up the building’s side until he got to the third-floor setback, where he repeated the procedure until, reaching up, he levered himself over the parapet onto the tiled floor of the roof garden.

Unlike the architecture of the building itself, the garden was a delicate mosaic of colors and textures, perfectly manicured, fragrant, and shaded from the glaring sun. Bourne, crouching in a patch of the deepest shadow, breathed in the heady scent of lime as he studied the garden’s layout. Save for him, the roof was deserted.

Two small structures were cleverly integrated into the garden’s design: the door down into the building and, as he discovered, a toolshed for the staff who pruned the trees, plants, and flowers. He headed to the doorway, saw that it was protected by a standard circuit-breaker alarm. The moment he opened the door from the outside, the alarm would be triggered.

Backtracking to the toolshed, he took a pruner and a wire stripper to the parapet. There, at the crevice where it met the tiled floor of the roof, he found the wires that connected the garden’s lights. Using the pruning shears, he cut off a six-foot length of wire. As he walked back to the doorway, he stripped the insulation off both ends.

At the door, he felt above for the alarm wire, stripping off two sections of the insulation and attaching the bare ends of the length of lighting wire he’d cut to the bare alarm wire. When he was certain the connections were secure, he cut the alarm wire midway between the jerry-rigged splices he’d made.

Cautiously, he opened the door only wide enough to slip inside. The splices had worked; the alarm was silent. He crept down the narrow, steep staircase to the third floor. His first order of business was to find Arkadin, the man who’d lured him here, so he could kill him. The second was finding Tracy and getting her out.

Tracy was standing by the window, looking out at the chaotic street, when she heard the door open behind her. Assuming it was Noah, she turned back into the room, only to confront a man with a shaved head, a goatee, black shot through with white, a ring of diamonds in the lobe of one ear, and a tattoo of a fanged bat on the side of his neck. With his wide shoulders, barrel chest, and thick legs, he looked like a wrestler or one of those mutant extreme fighters she’d seen once or twice on American TV.

“So you’re the one who brought my Goya,” the Bat-man said as he sauntered over to the table where the painting lay in all its grotesque grandeur. He had a way of walking, a rolling gait one saw only on muscle-men and sailors.

“That’s Noah’s,” Tracy said.

“No, my dear Ms. Atherton, it’s mine,” the Bat-man said in grating, thickly accented English. “Perlis merely bought it for me.” He held the painting up in front of him. “It’s my payment.” His chuckle was like the gurgle of a dying man. “A unique prize for unique services rendered.”

“You know my name,” she said, moving toward the table with its platters and thick glass bowls of food, “but I don’t know yours.”

“Are you certain you want to know it?” He continued to examine the Goya with a connoisseur’s practiced eye. And then, without allowing her space to answer: “Ah, well, then, it’s Nikolai Yevsen. Perhaps you’ve heard of me, I own Air Afrika, I own this building.”

“Frankly, I never heard of you or of Air Afrika. My business is art.”

“Is that so?” Yevsen placed the Goya back onto the table, across which he faced her. “Then what are you doing with Jason Bourne?”

“Jason Bourne?” She frowned. “Who’s Jason Bourne?”

“The man you brought here with you.”

Her frown deepened. “What are you talking about? I came alone. Noah can vouch for that.”

“Perlis is busy at the moment, interrogating your friend Mr. Bourne.”

“I don’t—” The rest of her words choked in her throat when saw a snubnosed .45 in his left hand.

IF
YOUR
BUSINESS
is art,” Yevsen said, “what are you doing with an assassin, a spy, a man with no scruples, no heart? A man who would put a bullet through your head as soon as look at you.”

“But who’s threatening to shoot me?” Tracy said.

“You or him?” “You brought him here to kill me.” Yevsen had a face that conveyed brute force, blunt power. He was a man used to getting what he wanted from anyone, at any time. “I have to ask myself why you would do that.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Who are you working for? Really.”

“I work for myself. I have for years.”

Yevsen pursed his lips, which were thick as slabs of raw meat, and as ruddy. “Let me make this easy for you, Ms. Atherton. In my world there are only two kinds of people: friends and enemies. You have to decide which one you are, right now, this minute. If you don’t answer truthfully I will put a bullet through your right shoulder. Then I’ll ask again. Silence or a lie will only gain you a bullet through your left shoulder. Then I’ll go to work on that beautiful face of yours.” He waggled the gun at her. “One thing is certain, when I get through with you, you won’t be a pretty sight.” That ghastly chuckle again. “No Hollywood casting agents will come calling, that I can guarantee you.”

“The man I’m with is Adam Stone, that’s really all I know.”

“See, the problem, Ms. Atherton, is that I’m not feeling it—the truth, I mean.”

“That is the truth.”

He took a step toward her so that he was pressed up against the far side of the table. “Now you’ve offended me. You think I’ll believe you brought someone here without knowing anything about him but his name—which in fact isn’t his name at all.”

Tracy closed her eyes. “No, of course not.” She took a deep breath and stared straight into Yevsen’s coffee-colored eyes. “Yes, I knew his real name was Jason Bourne, and, yes, it was my job not only to bring Noah the Goya, but to ensure Bourne would get here.”

Yevsen’s eyes narrowed. “Why was Bourne sent here? What is he after?”

“Don’t you know? You sent one of your Russian assassins, a man with a scar and a tattoo of three skulls on his neck, to kill Bourne in Seville.”

“The Torturer?” Yevsen’s face twisted in obvious disgust. “I’d sooner cut off my arm than hire that piece of filth.”

“All I know is that he thinks the man who tried to kill him is here. The same man who must have hired the Torturer.”

“That’s not me. He’s been given the wrong information.”

“Then I don’t understand why I was hired to make sure he got here.”

Yevsen shook his head. “Who hired you to do this?”

“Leonid Arkadin.”

Yevsen aimed the .45 at her right shoulder. “Another lie! Why would Leonid Danilovich hire you to ensure Bourne arrived here?”

“I don’t know, but…” Gauging his response, noting the look on his face, caused her to make a delayed connection. “Wait a minute, it must have been Arkadin who told you I had Bourne with me. He must be the one who hired the Torturer, which means he must be here, lying in wait for Bourne.”

“Being so close to death has made you desperate. At this very moment, Leonid Danilovich is in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan.”

“But don’t you see, Arkadin is the only one who knew Bourne was with me.”

“This is bullshit! Leonid Danilovich is my partner.”

“Why would I make up a lie like that? Arkadin paid me twenty thousand in diamonds.”

Yevsen recoiled as if he’d been struck. “Diamonds are Leonid Danilovich’s signature—how he gets paid and how he pays. Damn him to hell, what’s that lying sack of shit up to? If he thinks he can double-cross me—”