The Bourne Sanction (43 page)

“Where’s the suppressor?”

“I threw it down a storm drain,” she said, “as I was instructed to do.”

“Continuing to follow orders isn’t going to help. The people who hired you are going to kill you anyway,” he said as he dragged her down from the bulldozer. “You’re in way over your head.”

She gave a little moan and tried to break away from him.

He grabbed her. “If you want, I’ll let you go straight to the cops. They’ll be here any minute.”

Her mouth worked, but nothing intelligible came out.

Voices came to him, more distinct now. The police were on the other side of the corrugated wall. He pulled her in the opposite direction. “Do you know another way out of here?”

Petra nodded, pointing. She and Bourne ran diagonally across the yard, dodging heavy equipment as they picked their way through the rubble and around deep holes in the earth. Without turning around, Bourne could tell that the cops had entered the far side of the yard. He pushed Petra’s head down as he himself bent over to keep them both from being spotted. Beyond a crane, a crew chief’s trailer was set up on concrete blocks. Temporary electric lines were strung into it from just above the tin roof. Petra threw herself headlong under the trailer, and Bourne followed. The blocks set the trailer just high enough for them to worm their way on their bellies to the far side, where Bourne saw that a gap had been cut in the chain-link fence.

Crawling through the gap, they found themselves in a quiet alley filled with industrialsize garbage bins and a Dumpster filled with broken tiles, jagged blocks of terrazzo, and pieces of twisted metal, no doubt from whatever buildings had once stood in the now empty space behind them.

“This way,” Petra whispered as she took them out of the alley and down a residential street. Around the corner, she went to a car and opened it with a set of keys.

“Give me the keys,” Bourne said. “They’ll be looking for you.”

He caught them in midair, and they both got in. A block away they passed a cruising police car. The sudden tension caused Petra’s hands to tremble in her lap.

“We’re going right past them,” Bourne said. “Don’t look at them.”

Nothing further passed between them until Bourne said, “They’ve turned around. They’re coming after us.”

I’M
GOING
to drop you off somewhere,” Arkadin said. “I don’t want you in the middle of whatever’s going to come.”

Devra, in the passenger’s seat of the rented
BMW
, shot him a skeptical look. “That doesn’t sound like you at all.”

“No? Who does it sound like?”

“We still have to get Egon Kirsch.”

Arkadin turned a corner. They were in the center of the city, a place filled with old cathedrals and palaces. The place looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

“There’s been a complication,” he said. “The opposition’s king has entered the chess match. His name is Jason Bourne and he’s here in Munich.”

“All the more reason why I should stay with you.” Devra checked the action on one of the two Lugers that Arkadin had picked up from one of Icoupov’s local agents. “A crossfire has many benefits.”

Arkadin laughed. “There’s no lack of fire to you.”

That was another thing that drew him to her-she wasn’t afraid of the male fire burning in her belly. But he had promised her-and himself-that he would protect her. It had been a very long time since he’d said that to anyone, and even though he’d sworn never to make that promise again, he’d done just that. And strange to say, he felt good about it; in fact, there was a sense now when he was around her that he’d stepped out of the shadows he’d been born into, that had been tattooed into his flesh by so many violent incidents. For the first time in his life he felt as if he could take pleasure in the sun on his face, in the wind lifting Devra’s hair behind her like a mane, that he could walk down the street with her and not feel as if he was living in another dimension, that he hadn’t just arrived here from another planet.

As they stopped at a red light, he glanced at her. Sunlight was streaming into the interior, turning her face the palest shade of pink. At that precise moment he felt something rush out of him and into her, and she turned as if she felt it, too, and she smiled at him.

The light turned green and he accelerated through the cross street. His cell phone buzzed. A glance down at the number of the incoming call told him that Gala was calling. He didn’t answer; he had no wish to talk to her now, or ever, for that matter. Three minutes later, he received a text message. It read:
MISCHA
DEAD
.
KILLED

BY
JASON
BOURNE
.

Having followed Rodney Feir and General Kendall over the Key Bridge into Washington proper, Rob Batt made sure his long-lens
SLR
Nikon was fully loaded with fast film. He shot a series of digital photos with a compact camera, but these were only for reference, because they could be Photoshopped in a heartbeat. To forestall any suspicion that the images might be manipulated, he’d present the undeveloped roll of film to… well, this was his real problem. For a legitimate reason he was persona non grata at CI. It was astonishing how quickly years-long associations vanished. But now he realized he’d mistaken the camaraderie he’d developed with what had been his fellow directors for friendship. As far as they were concerned he no longer existed, so going to them with any alleged evidence that the
NSA
had turned yet another CI officer would be either ignored or laughed at. Trying to approach Veronica Hart was similarly out of the question. Assuming he could ever get to her-which he doubted-speaking to her now would be like groveling. Batt had never groveled in his life, and he wasn’t going to now. Then he laughed out loud at how easy it was to become self-deluded. Why should any of his former colleagues want anything to do with him? He’d betrayed them, abandoned them for the enemy. If he were in their shoes-and how he wished he were!-he’d feel the same venomous animosity toward someone who’d sold him out, which was why he’d embarked on this mission to destroy LaValle and Kendall. They’d sold him out-hung him out to dry as soon as it suited their purposes. The moment he came on board, they’d taken control of Typhon away from him.

Venomous animosity. That was an excellent phrase, he thought, one that precisely defined his feelings toward LaValle and Kendall. He knew, deep down, that hating them was the same as hating himself. But he couldn’t hate himself; that was self-defeating. At this very moment he couldn’t believe he’d sunk so low as to defect to the
NSA
. He’d gone through his line of thinking over and over, and now it seemed to him as if someone else, some stranger, had made that decision. It hadn’t been him, it couldn’t have been him, ergo, LaValle and Kendall had made him do it. For that they had to pay the ultimate price.

The two men were on the move again, and Batt headed out after them. After a tenminute drive, the two cars ahead of him pulled into the crowded parking lot of The Glass Slipper. As Batt passed by, Feir and Kendall got out of their respective cars and went inside. Batt drove around the block, parked on a side street. Reaching into the glove compartment, he took out a tiny Leica camera, the kind used by the Old Man in his youthful days of surveillance. It was the old spy standby, as dependable as it was easy to conceal. Batt loaded it with fast film, put it in the breast pocket of his shirt along with the digital camera, and got out of the car.

The night was filled with a gritty wind. Refuse spiraled up from the gutter, only to come to rest in a different place. Jamming his hands in his coat pockets, Batt hurried down the block and into The Glass Slipper. A slide guitarist was up on stage, wailing the blues, warming up for the feature act, a high-powered band with several hit CDs under its belt.

He’d heard about the club by reputation only. He knew, for instance, that it was owned by Drew Davis, primarily because Davis was a larger-than-life character who continually inserted himself into the political and economic affairs of African Americans in the district. Thanks to his influence, homeless shelters had become safer places for their residents, halfway houses had been built; he made it a point to hire ex-cons. He was so cannily public about these hirings that the ex-cons had no choice but to make the most of their second chances.

What Batt didn’t know about was the Slipper’s back room, so he was puzzled when, after a full circuit of the space, plus an expedition to the men’s room, he could find no trace of either Feir or the general.

Fearing that they’d slipped out the back, he returned to the parking lot, only to find their cars where they’d left them. Back in the Slipper, he took another trip through the crowd, figuring he must have missed them somehow. Still, there was no sign, but as he neared the rear of the space he spotted someone talking to a muscled black man the approximate size of a refrigerator. After a small bout of jawing, Mr. Muscle opened a door Batt hadn’t noticed before, and the man slipped through. Guessing this was where Feir and Kendall must have gone, Batt edged his way toward Mr. Muscle and the door. It was then that he saw Soraya walk through the front door. Bourne almost stripped the car’s gears trying to outrun the police car on their tail.

“Take it easy,” Petra said, “or you’ll tear my poor car apart.”

He wished he’d taken a longer look at the map of the city. A street blocked off with wooden sawhorses flashed by on their left. The paving had been torn up, leaving the heavily pitted and cracked underlayer, the worst parts of which were in the process of being excavated.

“Hold on tight,” Bourne said as he reversed, then turned into the street and drove the car through the sawhorses, cracking one and scattering the others. The car hit the underlayer, jounced down the street at what seemed a reckless speed. It felt as if the vehicle were being machine-gunned by a pile driver. Bourne’s teeth rattled in his head, and Petra struggled to keep from crying out.

Behind them, the police car was having even more difficulty keeping to a straight path. It jerked back and forth to avoid the deepest of the holes gouged in the roadbed. Putting on another burst of speed, Bourne was able to lengthen the distance between them. But then he glanced ahead. A cement truck was parked crosswise at the other end of the street. If they kept going there was no way to avoid crashing into it. Bourne kept the speed on as the cement truck loomed larger and larger. The police car was coming up fast behind them.

“What are you doing?” Petra screamed. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

At that moment, Bourne threw the car into neutral, stepped on the brake. He immediately changed into reverse, took his foot off the brake, and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The car shuddered, its engine screaming. Then the transmission locked into place, and the car flew backward. The police car came on, its driver frozen in shock. Bourne swerved around it as the vehicle raced forward into the side of the cement truck. Bourne wasn’t even looking. He was busy steering the car back down the street in reverse. Blasting past the shattered sawhorses, he turned, braked, put the car into first, and drove off.

What the hell are you doing here?” Noah said. “You should be on your way to Damascus.”

“I’m due to take off in four hours.” Moira put her hands in her pockets so he wouldn’t see that they were curled into fists. “You haven’t answered my question.”

Noah sighed. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

Her laugh had a bitter taste to it. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Because,” Noah said, “you’ve been with Black River long enough to know how we operate.”

They were walking down Kaufingerstrasse in the center of Munich, a heavily trafficked area just off the Marienplatz. Turning in at the sign for the Augustiner Bierkeller, they entered a long, dim cathedral-like space that smelled powerfully of beer and boiled wurst. The hubbub of noise was just right for masking a private conversation. Crossing the red flagstone floor, they chose a table in one of the rooms, sat on wooden benches. The person closest to them was an old man sucking on a pipe while he leisurely read the paper.

Moira and Noah both ordered a Hefeweizen, a wheat beer still clouded with unfiltered yeast, from a waitress dressed in the regional Dirndlkleid, a long, wide skirt and low-cut blouse. She had an apron around her waist, along with a decorative purse.

“Noah,” Moira said when the beers had been served, “I don’t hold any illusions about why we do what we do, but how do you expect me to ignore this intel I got right from the source?”

Noah took a long draw of his Hefeweizen, fastidiously wiped his lips before answering. Then he began to tick off points on his fingers. “First, this man Hauser told you that the flaw in the software is virtually undetectable. Second, what he told you isn’t verifiable. He might simply be a disgruntled employee trying to get revenge on Kaller Steelworks. Have you considered that possibility?”

“We could run our own tests on the software.”

“No time. There’s less than two days before the
LNG
tanker is scheduled to dock at the terminal.” He continued ticking off points. “Third, we couldn’t do anything without alerting NextGen, who would then turn around and confront Kaller Steelworks, which would put us in the middle of a nasty situation. And, fourth and finally, what part of the sentence We’ve officially notified NextGen that we’ve withdrawn from the project do you not understand?”

Moira sat back for a moment and took a deep breath. “This is solid intel, Noah. It could lead to the situation we were most worried about: a terrorist attack. How can you-”

“You’ve already taken several steps over the line, Moira,” Noah said sharply. “Get your tail on that plane and your head into your new assignment, or you’re through at Black River.”

It’s better for the moment that we don’t meet,” Icoupov said. Arkadin was seething, barely holding down his rage, and only then because Devra, canny witch that she was, dug her fingernails into the palm of his hand. She understood him; no questions, no probing, no trying to pick over his past like a vulture.