Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (43 page)

McColl had received not only Annaka Vadas' name and address—by an extraordinary stroke of luck, just four blocks north of the baths—but also her photo via a jpg file downloaded to his cell phone. As a result, he had no trouble recognizing her when she came out of the entrance to 106-108 Fo utca. He was immediately stirred by her beauty, the authoritative manner of her gait. He watched as she put away her cell phone, unlocked a blue Skoda and slid in behind the wheel.

Just before Annaka inserted her key into the ignition slot, Khan rose from the backseat of the car and said, "I should tell Bourne everything." She started but made no attempt to turn around; she was that well trained. Staring at him in the rear-view mirror, she replied shortly, "Tell him what? You don't know anything."

"I know enough. I know you're the one who brought the police to Mol-nar's apartment. I know why you did that. Bourne was getting too close to the truth, wasn't he, getting too close to finding out that Spalko was the one who'd set him up. I'd already told him, but it seems he doesn't believe anything I say."

"Why should he? You have no credibility with him. He's convinced himself you're part of a vast plot to manipulate him."

Khan whipped a steely hand over the seatback, gripping her arm, which had slowly moved while she spoke. "Don't do that." He took her purse, opened it, removed the gun.

"You tried to kill me once. Believe me, you won't get a second chance." She stared at his reflected image. Inside her was a constellation of emotions. "You think I'm lying to you about Jason, but I'm not."

"What I'd like to know," he said easily, ignoring her comment, "was how you convinced him you loved your father when, really, you hated his guts." She sat mute, breathing slowly, trying to gather her wits. She knew she was in an extremely perilous situation. The question was how was she going to extricate herself.

"How you must've rejoiced when he was shot to death," Khan continued, "though, knowing you as I do, you probably wished you'd been able to shoot him yourself."

"If you're going to kill me," she said tersely, "do it now and spare me your useless chatter."

With a move like a cobra, he leaned forward, grabbed her by her throat, and at last she looked alarmed, which was, after all, the first thing he was after. "I don't intend to spare you anything, Annaka. What did you spare me when you had the chance?"

"I didn't think I needed to baby you."

"You rarely thought when we were together," he said, "at least, not about me." Her smile was cold. "Oh, I thought about you constantly."

"And repeated every one of those thoughts to Stepan Spalko." His hand tightened on her throat, rattling her head from side to side. "Isn't that right?"

"Why ask me when you already know the answer?" she said a little breathlessly.

"How long has he been playing me?"

Annaka closed her eyes for a moment. "From the beginning." Khan ground his teeth in fury. "What's his game? What does he want from me?"

"That I don't know." She made a wheezing noise as he squeezed so hard he cut off all air to her windpipe. When he released his grip sufficiently, she said in a thin voice, "Hurt me all you want, you'll still get the same answer, because it's the truth."

"The truth!" He laughed derisively. "You wouldn't know the truth if it bit you." Nevertheless, he believed her, and was disgusted by her uselessness. "What's your business with Bourne?" "Keeping him away from Stepan." He nodded, recalling his conversation with Spalko. "That makes sense." The lie had come easily to her lips. It had the ring of truth not only because she'd had a lifetime of practice but because up until this last call from Spalko it
had
been the truth. Spalko's plans had changed, and now that she'd had time to think it through, it suited her new purpose to tell this to Khan. Perhaps it was fortuitous that he'd come upon her like this, but only if she managed to get out of the encounter alive.

"Where's Spalko now?" he asked her. "Here in Budapest?" "Actually, he's on his way back from Nairobi." Khan was surprised. "What was he doing in Nairobi?" She laughed, but with his fingers painfully gripping her throat, it sounded more like a dry cough.

"D'you really think he'd tell me? You know how secretive he is." He put his lips against her ear. "I know how secretive
we
used to be, Annaka—only it wasn't secretive at all, was it?"

Her eyes engaged his in the mirror. "I didn't tell him everything." How strange it was not to be looking at him directly. "Some things I kept for myself." Khan's lips curled in contempt. "You don't actually expect me to believe that."

"Believe what you want," she said flatly, "you always have." He shook her again.

"Meaning?"

She gasped and bit her lower lip. "I never understood the depth of my hatred for my father until I spent time with you." He let up on his grip and she swallowed convulsively.

"But you with your unswerving enmity toward your father, you showed me the light; you showed me how to bide my time, to savor the thought of revenge. And you're right, when he was shot, I felt the bitterness of not having done it myself." Though he had no intention of showing it, what she said shook him. Up until a moment ago, he'd had no idea he'd revealed so much of himself to her. He felt ashamed and resentful that she'd been able to get so far under his skin without him being aware of it.

"We were together a year," he said, "a lifetime for people like us."

"Thirteen months, twenty-one days, six hours," she said. "I remember the precise moment I walked out on you because it was then I knew I couldn't control you as Stepan wanted me to."

"And why was that?" His voice was casual, even though his interest was anything but. Her eyes had engaged his again, refused to let them go. "Because," she said, "when I was with you, I could no longer control myself."

Was she telling the truth or was she playing him again? Khan, so certain about everything until Jason Bourne had come back into his life, didn't know. Once again he felt ashamed and resentful, even a bit frightened that his vaunted powers of observation and instinct were failing him. Despite his best efforts, emotion had entered the picture, spreading its toxic haze over his mind, clouding his judgment, becalming him on an indistinct sea. He could feel his desire for her rising more strongly than it ever had before. He wanted her so badly that he couldn't help but press his lips against the precious skin at the nape of her neck.

And in so doing he missed the shadow's sudden fall into the interior of the Skoda, the shadow marked by Annaka, who shifted her gaze, saw the burly American wrench open the rear door and bring down the butt end of his gun onto the back of Khan's skull. Khan's grip relaxed, his hand dropping away as he keeled over onto the backseat, unconscious.

"Hello, Ms. Vadas," the burly American said in perfectly inflected Hungarian. He smiled as he swept up her gun into his huge hand. "My name's McColl, but I'd be obliged if you called me Kevin."

Zina dreamed of an orange sky, beneath which a modern-day horde—an army of Chechens brandishing NX 20s—descended from the Caucuses onto the steppes of Russia to lay waste to their bedeviling nemesis. But such was the power of Spalko's experiment that for her it obliterated time. She was back again, a child in her parents' miserable shellshocked hovel, her mother staring at her from out of her ruined face, saying, "I
can't get
up. Even for our water. I can't go on...
."

But someone had to go on. She was then fifteen, the oldest of the four children. When her mother's father-in-law came, he took only her brother Kanti, the male heir of the clan; the Russians had either killed the others, including his own sons, or had sent them away to the dreaded camps in Pobedinskoe and Krasnaya Turbina.

After that, she took over her mother's chores, collecting metal and water. But at night, exhausted as she was, sleep escaped her, fleeing from the vision of Kanti's tear-streaked face, his terror at leaving his family, everything he'd known.

Three times a week she slipped away crossing terrain littered with unex-ploded landmines in order to see Kanti, to kiss his pale cheeks and give him news of home. One day she arrived to find her grandfather dead. Of Kanti there was no sign. The Russian Special Forces had come through in a sweep, killing her grandfather and taking her brother to Krasnaya Turbina.

She'd spent the next six months trying to find news of Kanti, but she was young and inexperienced in these matters. Besides, without money she could find no one willing to talk. Three years later, her mother dead, her sisters in foster homes, she joined the rebel forces. She hadn't chosen an easy path: She'd had to endure male intimidation; she'd had to learn to be meek and subservient, to identify what she had then thought of as her meager resources and husband them. But she had always been exceptionally clever and this made her a quick learner of physical skills. It also provided her with a springboard from which to discover how the power game was played. Unlike a man, who rose through the ranks by intimidation, she was obliged to use the physical assets she was born with. A year after enduring the hardships of one handler after another, she managed to convince her controller to mount a night-time raid on Krasnaya Turbina. This was the sole reason she had joined the rebels, had put herself through hell, but she was frankly terrified of what she might find. And yet she found nothing, no evidence of her brother's whereabouts. It was as if Kanti had simply ceased to exist. Zina awoke with a gasp. She sat up, looked around, realized that she was in Spalko's jet on the way to Iceland. In her mind's eye, still half in its dream-state, she saw Kanti's tear-streaked face, smelled the acrid stench of lye coming from the killing pits at Krasnaya Turbina. She put her head down. It was the uncertainty that ate at her. If she knew he was dead, she could perhaps put her guilt to rest. But if, by some miracle of chance, he was still alive, she would never know, couldn't come to his rescue, save him from the terrors to which the Russians continued to subject him. Aware of someone approaching, she looked up. It was Magomet, one of the two lieutenants Hasan had brought with him to Nairobi to bear witness to the gateway to their freedom. Akhmed, the other lieutenant, was studiously ignoring her as he had since he'd seen her comfortable in Western dress. Magomet, a bear of a man with eyes the color of Turkish coffee and a long curling beard he combed with his fingers when he was anxious, stood slightly bent, leaning against the seatback.

"Is everything in order, Zina?" he asked.

Her eyes searched first for Hasan, found him asleep. Then she curved her lips in the ghost of a smile. "I was dreaming of our coming triumph."

"It'll be magnificent, won't it? Vindication at last! Our day in the sun!" She could tell that he was dying to sit next to her, so she said nothing; he would have to be content with her not shooing him away. She stretched, arching her breasts, watching with amusement as his eyes opened slightly.
All that's missing is his tongue hanging out,
she thought.

"Would you like some coffee?" he said.

"I suppose I wouldn't mind." She kept her voice carefully neutral, knowing that he was questing for hints. Her status, heightened by the important task the Shaykh had given her, the trust implicit in what he'd asked of her, was clearly not lost on him, as it was on Akhmed, who, like most Chechen males, saw her only as an inferior female. For a moment, then, her nerve failed her as she considered the enormous cultural barrier she was attempting to attack. But a moment's clear-eyed concentration returned her to her normal state. The plan she'd formulated with the Shaykh's instigation was sound; it would work—she knew it as surely as she drew breath. Now, as Magomet turned to go, she spoke up in furtherance of that plan. "And while you're in the galley," she said, "bring yourself a cup as well."

When he returned, she took the coffee from him, sipped it without inviting him to sit. He stood, his elbows on the seatback, holding his cup between his hands.

"Tell me," Magomet said, "what's he like?"

"The Shaykh? Haven't you asked Hasan?"

"Hasan Arsenov says nothing."

"Perhaps," she said, looking at Magomet over the rim of her cup, "he jealously guards his favored status."

"Do you?"

Zina laughed softly. "No. I don't mind sharing." She sipped more coffee. "The Shaykh's a visionary. He sees the world not as it is but as it will be a year from now, five years! It's quite astonishing to be around him, a man who's so in control of every aspect of his self, a man who commands so much power across the globe." Magomet made a sound of relief. "Then we're truly saved."

"Yes, saved." Zina put aside her cup, produced a straight razor and cream she'd found in the well-equipped toilet. "Come sit down here, opposite me." Magomet hesitated only an instant. When he sat, he was so close their knees touched.

"You can't deplane in Iceland looking like that, you know." He watched her from out of his dark eyes as his fingers combed through his beard. Without taking her eyes off his, Zina grasped his hand in hers, drew it away from his beard. Then she opened the razor, applied cream to his right cheek. The blade scraped against his flesh. Magomet trembled a little, then, as she began to shear him, his eyes closed.

At some point she became aware that Akhmed was sitting up, watching her. By this time, half of Magomet's face was clean-shaven. She continued what she was doing as Akhmed rose and approached her. He said nothing but stared in disbelief as Magomet's beard was peeled away and his face was slowly revealed.

At length he cleared his throat, said to her in a soft voice, "Do you think I could be next?"

"I wouldn't have expected this guy to be carrying such a mediocre gun," Kevin McColl said as he hauled Annaka out of the Skoda. He made a noise of contempt as he stowed it away.

Annaka went meekly enough, happy that he'd mistaken her gun for Khan's. She stood on the sidewalk beneath the sullen sky of afternoon, her head bowed, eyes lowered, a secret smile lighting her up inside. Like many men, he couldn't fathom that she'd carry a weapon, let alone might know how to use it. What he didn't know would certainly hurt him—she'd make sure of it.