The Bourne Betrayal (37 page)

And yet there was something inside him, some nagging sense that this was not the only way it could be. There was Deron, of course, who’d been born and raised in the hood. But he’d had a momma who was straight and a father who’d loved him. In some way Tyrone couldn’t understand, let alone articulate, he suspected those things counted for something. Then Deron had gone away to be educated in the white world and everyone in the hood-including Tyrone-had instantly hated his guts. But when he’d returned they forgave him everything because they saw he hadn’t abandoned them, as they’d feared. For that, they loved him all the more, and rallied ‘round to protect him.

Now Tyrone, sitting under the tree opposite the burned-out hulk of M&N Bodywork, faced both the destruction of his dream to make it his crew’s crib, and the terrible notion that the dream was not what he’d wanted after all. He stared at the blank, blackened wall of cinder block, and it looked not much different than his life.

He drew out his cellie. He didn’t have Miss S’s number. How to contact her, how to let her know he had the 411-what did Deron call it? intel, yeah-for her? Him and only him. If she’d meet him, if she’d walk with him again. He forced himself to believe that’s all he wanted from her. The real truth he couldn’t face yet.

He called 411. The only listed number for CI was the so-called public relations office. Tyrone knew what a joke that was, but he dialed it anyway. Once again, his life had refused to allow him a choice.

“Yes? How can I help?” a young white male voice said in clipped fashion.

“I’m tryin’ t’reach a agent I spoke to coupla days ago,” Tyrone said, for once self-conscious about his ghetto slur.

“The agent’s name?”

“Soraya Moore.”

“Just a moment, please.”

Tyrone heard some clicking, all at once became paranoid. He got up from his perch, began to walk down the street.

“Sir? May I have your name and number, please?”

Paranoia in full flower. He began to walk faster, as if he could outrun the inquiry. “I just want to speak to-”

“If you give me your name and number, I’ll see that Agent Moore gets the message.”

At this, Tyrone felt completely boxed in by a world he knew nothing about. “Just tell her I know who put the salt on her tail.”

“Pardon me, sir, you know what?”

Tyrone felt that his own ignorance was being used as a weapon against which he was powerless. By design, his world was hidden within the larger one. Once, he’d been proud of that. Now, all at once, he knew it was a failing.

He repeated what he’d said, disconnected. Disgusted, he threw the cellie into the gutter, made a mental note to have DJ Tank get him another burner. His old one had just gotten too hot.

So who are you, really?” Yevgeny Feyodovich asked with world weariness.

“Does it matter?” Bourne said.

“I suppose not.” Yevgeny stared out the window as they passed through the city. Every time he saw a police car or a policeman on foot, his muscles tensed. “You’re not even Moldavian, are you?”

“Your pal, Bogdan Illiyanovich, tried to kill me.” Bourne, watching the other’s face carefully, said:

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Today,” Yevgeny Feyodovich replied, “nothing surprises me.”

“Who hired you?” Bourne said sharply.

Yevgeny’s head swung around. “You don’t expect me to tell you.”

“Was it the Saudi, Fadi?”

“I don’t know a Fadi.”

“But you knew Edor Vladovich Lemontov, a fictitious drug lord.”

“I never actually said I knew him.” Yevgeny Feyodovich looked around. Judging by the sun, they were heading southwest. “Where are we going?”

“A killing field.”

Yevgeny affected nonchalance. “I should say my prayers then.”

“By all means.”

Soraya drove hard and fast, always staying within the speed limit. The last thing any of them needed was to attract the attention of a cruising police car. At length, they left the urban sprawl of Odessa behind, only to be confronted by rows of huge factories, transfer depots, and rail yards.

A bit farther on, there was a break of perhaps three or four kilometers where a village had sprung up, stores and houses looking tiny and incongruous amid the gargantuan structures on either side. Near the far end, Soraya turned down a side street that was soon fleshed out with foliage, both natural and artificial.

Oleksandr was waiting for them in the front yard of his owner and trainer-a friend of Soraya-who was, at the moment, nowhere to be seen. The boxer lifted his head as the battered Skoda turned into the driveway. The dacha behind him was of moderate size, set in a shallow dell, protected from its neighbors by thick stands of fir and cypress.

As Soraya rolled to a halt, Oleksandr rose, trotting toward them. He barked in greeting as he saw Soraya emerge from the car.

“My God, that’s a huge beast,” Yevgeny Feyodovich said under his breath.

Bourne smiled at him. “Welcome to the killing ground.” He grabbed the Ukrainian by his collar and dragged him off the backseat, out into the yard.

Oleksandr, seeing an unfamiliar face, raised his ears, sat back on his haunches, growled low in his throat. He bared his teeth.

“Let me introduce you to your executioner.” Bourne shoved Yevgeny toward the dog.

The Ukrainian appeared thunderstruck. “The dog?”

“Oleksandr chewed Fadi’s face off,” Bourne said. “And hasn’t eaten since then.”

Yevgeny Feyodovich shuddered. He closed his eyes. “All I want is to be somewhere else.”

“Don’t we all,” Bourne said, meaning it. “Just tell me who hired you.”

Yevgeny Feyodovich wiped his sweating face. “He’ll kill me, no doubt.”

Bourne swept his hand toward the boxer. “At least that way you’ll have a head start.”

At that moment, just as they’d planned, Soraya gave Oleksandr a hand command. The dog leapt forward directly toward Yevgeny, who let out with a high, almost comical yelp.

At the last instant Bourne reached down and grabbed the dog’s collar, pulling him up short. The maneuver took more out of Bourne than it should have, sending shock waves of pain radiating from the wound in his side. He gave no outward sign of his distress. Nevertheless, he was aware of Soraya’s eyes reading his face as if it were today’s newspaper.

“Yevgeny Feyodovich,” Bourne said, straightening up, “as you can plainly see, Oleksandr is big and powerful. My hand is getting tired. You have five seconds before I let go.”

Yevgeny, his mind functioning off the adrenaline of terror, made up his mind in three. “All right, keep that dog away from me.”

Bourne began to walk toward him, a straining Oleksandr in tow. He saw Yevgeny’s eyes open wide enough to see the whites all around.

“Who hired you, Yevgeny Feyodovich?”

“A man named Nesim Hatun.” The Ukrainian could not take his eyes off the boxer. “He works out of Istanbul-the Sultanahmet District.”

“Where in Sultanahmet?” Bourne said.

Yevgeny cringed away from Oleksandr, whom Bourne had allowed to rise up on his hind legs. He was as tall as the Ukrainian. “I don’t know,” Yevgeny said. “I swear. I’ve told you everything.”

The moment Bourne let go of Oleksandr’s collar, the dog sprang forward like an arrow from a drawn bow. Yevgeny Feyodovich screamed. A stain appeared at the crotch of his trousers as he was plowed under.

A moment later, Oleksandr was sitting on his chest, licking his face.

As far as freight ports are concerned, you basically have two choices,” Dr. Pavlyna said. “Odessa and Ilyichevsk, some seven kilometers to the southwest.”

“What’s your take?” Matthew Lerner said. They were in her car, heading toward the northern end of Odessa, where the shipyards were located.

“Odessa is, of course, closer,” she said. “But the police are sure to have at least some surveillance there. On the other hand, Ilyichevsk is appealing simply because it’s farther away from the center of the manhunt; there’s sure to be less of a police presence-if any. Also, it’s a larger, busier facility, with ferries on more frequent schedules.”

“Ilyichevsk it is, then.”

She changed lanes, preparing to make a turn, so that they could head south. “The only problem for them will be roadblocks.”

Leaving the main road behind, Soraya drove through back streets, even some alleys she could squeeze the Skoda through.

“Even so,” Bourne said, “I wouldn’t rule out hitting one roadblock between here and Ilyichevsk.”

They had left Yevgeny Feyodovich in the front yard of Soraya’s friend, guarded for the time being by Oleksandr. Three hours from now, when his release would be meaningless to them, Soraya’s friend would let him go.

“How are you feeling?” Soraya drove through narrow streets lined with warehouses. Here and there in the distance, they could see the portal and floating cranes at the port of Ilyichevsk rising like the necks of dinosaurs. It was slower going along this route, but it was also safer than taking the main road.

“I’m fine,” he said, but she could tell he was lying. His face was still pale, stitched with pain, his breathing ragged, not as deep as it ought to be.

“Glad to hear it,” she said with heavy irony. “Because like it or not, we’re going to come up against that roadblock in about three minutes.”

He looked up ahead. There were several cars and trucks stopped, lined up to be funneled through a gap between two armored police vehicles parked perpendicular to the street, so that their formidable tanklike sides were presented to the oncoming traffic. Two policemen in riot gear were questioning the cars’ occupants, peering into their trunks or-in the case of the trucks-checking the rear and underneath the carriage. With faces clamped tight, they worked slowly, methodically, thoroughly. Clearly, they were leaving nothing to chance.

Soraya shook her head. “There’s no way out of this, no alternate route I can take. The water’s on our right, the main highway on our left.” She glanced in her side mirror, at the traffic building behind her, another police car. “I can’t even turn around without the risk of being stopped.”

“Time for Plan B,” Bourne said grimly. “You watch the cops in back of us; I’ll keep my eye on the ones in front.”

Valery Petrovich, having just emptied his bladder against the brick side of a building, walked back to his position. He and his partner had been assigned to check that no vehicle lined up for the roadblock tried to turn around. He was thinking with some disgust about this bottom-of-the-barrel assignment, worrying that he’d been hit with it because he’d pissed off his sergeant, because, true, he’d beaten him at dice and at cards, taking six hundred rubles off him each time. Also true, the man was a vindictive bastard. Look what he’d done to poor Mikhail Arkanovich for mistakenly eating the sergeant’s pierogi, vile though they’d been, so he’d heard from a very bitter Mikhail Arkanovich.

He was considering methods for remedying his deteriorating situation when he saw someone slip out of a battered Skoda seven cars from the front of the queue. His curiosity piqued, Valery Petrovich walked forward along the fronts of the warehouses, keeping his eye on the figure. He had just made out that it was a man when the figure slipped into a refuse-strewn alley between two buildings. Glancing front and back, the officer realized that no one else had noticed the man.

For half a second, he thought about using his walkie-talkie to alert his partner to the suspicious figure. That’s all the time it took for him to realize that this was his ticket to returning to his sergeant’s good graces. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip through his fingers by allowing someone else to capture what might very possibly be the fugitive they’d been sent to capture. He had no intention of becoming the next Mikhail Arkanovich, so, pistol drawn, licking his chops like a wolf about to rend its unsuspecting prey, he hurried eagerly on.

Taking a quick visual survey behind the line of warehouses, Bourne had already determined the best route to work his way around the roadblock. Under normal circumstances, there would have been no problem. Trouble was, he now found himself in anything but normal circumstances. Certainly he’d been injured before in the field-many times, in fact. But rarely this severely. On the car ride out to the dog handler’s, he’d begun to feel feverish. Now he felt chills running through him. His forehead was hot, his mouth dry. He was in need not only of rest but also of more antibiotics-a full course-to fully pull himself out of the weakness inflicted by the knife wound.

Rest was, of course, out of the question. Where he was going to get antibiotics was problematic. If he didn’t have an urgent reason to get out of Odessa immediately, he could have gone to the CI doctor. But that, too, was now out of the question.

He was in the open area behind the warehouses. A wide paved road gave access to the row of loading docks. Here and there were scattered refrigerated trucks and semis, either backed up to the docks or pulled to the far side of the road, where they sat idle, waiting for their drivers to return.

As he moved toward the area parallel to the roadblock on the other side of the buildings on his left, he passed a couple of forklifts, dodging several others loaded with large crates that scooted from one loading dock to another.

He saw his pursuer-a policemen-as a reflection in a forklift. Without breaking stride, he clambered painfully onto a loading dock and passed between two stacks of boxes into the warehouse interior. All the men, he noticed, were wearing port ID tags.

He found his way to the locker room. It was past the beginning of the shift, and the tiled room was deserted. He went along the lines of lockers, picking the locks at random. The third locker provided what he was looking for: a maintenance uniform. He donned it, not without a series of hot stitches of pain radiating out from his side. A thorough search turned up no ID tag. He knew how to take care of that. On the way out, he brushed against a man coming in, mumbling a hasty apology. As he hurried back onto the loading dock, he clipped on the tag he’d lifted.

Checking the immediate environment, he could find no sign of his pursuer. He set out on foot, skirting the empty steel cabs of the trucks whose cargo was being unloaded onto the concrete docks, where each crate, barrel, or container was checked against a manifest or bill of lading.