The Bourne Betrayal (41 page)

Lindros brushed away the gun muzzle as he sat up. “You make it sound so cut-and-dried.”

“Science is cut-and-dried,” Dr. Andursky pointed out. “Now, why don’t you go over to the examining table so I can take a look at how your eye is healing.”

Lindros rose, walked back, lay down on the table. Dr. Andursky, flanked by his guards, used a pair of surgeon’s scissors to cut through the filthy bandages over Lindros’s right eye. He clucked to himself as he peered into the still-raw pit where Martin’s eye used to be.

“They could have done better than this.” Dr. Andursky was clearly miffed. “All my good work . .

.”

He washed up at the sink, snapped on a pair of the latex gloves, and got to work cleaning the excavation. Lindros felt nothing more than the dull ache he’d become accustomed to. It was like a houseguest who showed up unexpectedly one night and never left. Now, like it or not, the pain was a permanent fixture.

“I imagine you’ve already adjusted to your monovision.” As was his wont, Dr. Andursky worked quickly and efficiently. He knew what he needed to do, and how he wanted to do it.

“I have an idea,” Lindros said. “Why don’t you take Fadi’s right eye and give it to me?”

“How very Old Testament of you.” Dr. Andursky rebandaged the excavation. “But you’re alone, Lindros. There’s no one here to help you.”

Finished, he snapped off his gloves. “For you, there is no escape from this hell-pit.”

Jon Mueller caught up with Defense Secretary Halliday as he was coming out of the Pentagon. Halliday was, of course, not alone. He had with him two aides, a bodyguard, and several pilot fishlieutenant generals eager to ingratiate themselves with the great man.

Halliday, seeing Mueller out of the corner of his eye, made a hand gesture Mueller knew well. He hung back, at the bottom of the stairs, at the last minute allowing himself to be swept up into the secretary’s retinue as he ducked into his limo. They said nothing to each another until the two aides had been dropped off near the secretary’s office. Then the privacy wall came down between passengers in the rear, and driver and bodyguard in front. Mueller brought Halliday up to date.

Storm clouds of displeasure raced across the secretary’s broad forehead. “Lerner assured me everything was under control.”

“Matt made the mistake of farming out the job. I’ll take care of the Held woman myself.”

The secretary nodded. “All right. But be warned, Jon. Nothing can be traced back to me, you understand? If something goes wrong, I won’t lift a finger. In fact, I may be the one to prosecute you. From this moment on, you’re on your own.”

Mueller grinned like a savage. “No worries, Mr. Secretary, I’ve been on my own for as long as I can remember. It’s bred in the bone.”

Sarah. Just Sarah. You never followed it up?”

“There was nothing to follow up. I couldn’t even remember her face clearly. It was night, everything happened so fast. And then you were shot. We were on the run, pursued. We holed up in the catacombs, then got out. Afterward, all I had was a name. There was no official record of her body; it was as if we’d never been in Odessa.” Soraya put her head down. “But even if there had been some way, the truth is I . . . couldn’t. I wanted to forget her, forget her death ever happened.”

“But I remember running down a cobbled street, holding her in my arms, her blood everywhere.”

Soraya nodded. Her face was heavy with sorrow. “You saw her moving. You picked her up. That’s when you were shot. I returned fire and suddenly there was a hail of bullets. We got separated. You went to find the target, Hamid ibn Ashef. From what you told me later, when we rendezvoused in the catacombs, you found him and shot him, but were unsure whether you’d killed him.”

“And Sarah?”

“By then she was long dead. You left her on the way to kill Hamid ibn Ashef.”

For a long time, there was silence in the stateroom. Bourne turned, went to the water jug, poured himself half a glass. He opened the twist of paper Dr. Pavlyna had given him, swallowed one of the antibiotic pills. The water tasted flat, slightly bitter.

“How did it happen?” He had his back to her. He didn’t want to see her face when she told him.

“She appeared at the spot where we met my conduit. He told us where Hamid ibn Ashef was. In return, we gave him the money he’d asked for. We were finishing the transaction when we saw her. She was running. I don’t know why. Also, she had her mouth open as if shouting something. But the conduit was shouting, too. We thought he’d betrayed us-which, it turned out, he had. We shot at her. Both of us. And she fell.”

Bourne, abruptly tired, sat down in the bed.

Soraya took a step toward him. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, took a deep breath. “It was a mistake,” he said.

“Do you think that makes any difference to her?”

“You may not even have hit her.”

“And then again I may have. In any event, would that absolve me?”

“You’re drowning in your own guilt.”

She gave a sad little laugh. “Then I guess we both are.”

They regarded each other across the small space of the stateroom. The Itkursk’s horn sounded again, muffled, mournful. The ro-ro rocked them as it plowed south across the Black Sea, but it was so quiet in the stateroom that she imagined she could hear the sound of his mind working through a deep and tangled mystery.

He said, “Soraya, listen to me, I think Sarah’s death is the key to everything that’s happened, everything that’s happening now.”

“You can’t be serious.” But by the expression on his face she knew he was, and she was sorry for her response. “Go on,” she said.

“I think Sarah is central. I think her death set everything in motion.”

“Dujja’s plan to detonate a nuclear bomb in a major American city? That’s a stretch.”

“Not the plan per se. I have no doubt that was already being discussed,” Bourne said. “But I think the timing of it changed. I think Sarah’s death lit the fuse.”

“That would mean that Sarah is connected with your original mission to terminate Hamid ibn Ashef.”

He nodded. “That would be my guess. I don’t think she was at the rendezvous point by accident.”

“Why would she be there? How would she have known?”

“She could have found out from your conduit. He betrayed us to Hamid ibn Ashef’s people,”

Bourne said. “As to why she was there, I have no idea.”

Soraya frowned. “But where’s the link between Hamid ibn Ashef and Fadi?”

“I’ve been thinking about that bit of intel you got from your forensics friend at the Fire Investigation Unit.”

“Carbon disulfide-the accelerant Fadi used at the Hotel Constitution.”

“Right. One of things you told me carbon disulfide is used for is flotation-a method for the separation of mixtures. Flotation was developed in the late twentieth century on a commercial scale mainly for the processing of silver.”

Soraya’s eyes lit up. “One of Integrated Vertical Technologies’ businesses is silver processing.
IVT

is owned by Hamid ibn Ashef.”

Bourne nodded. “I think
IVT
is the legitimate entity that’s been bankrolling Dujja all these years.”

“But Sarah-”

“As for Sarah, or anything else, for that matter, we’re dead in the water until we reach Istanbul and can connect to the Internet. Right now, our cell phones are useless.”

Soraya rose. “In that event, I’m going to get us something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

“We’ll go together.”

Bourne began to rise, but she pushed him back onto the bed. “You need your rest, Jason. I’ll get food for both of us.”

She smiled at him before turning and going out the door.

Bourne lay back for a moment, trying to recall more of the abortive mission to terminate Hamid ibn Ashef. He imagined the young woman Sarah as she ran into the square, mouth open. What was she shouting? Who was she shouting at? He felt her in his arms, strained to hear her failing voice.

But it was Fadi’s voice he heard, echoing beneath the pier in Odessa: “I’ve waited a long time for this moment. A long time to look you in the face again. A long time to exact my revenge.”

So there was a significant personal element to Fadi’s plan. Because Fadi had come after him, leading him carefully, craftily into the web of a conspiracy of unprecedented proportions. It was he who had come after the man posing as Lindros; he who had vouched for the impostor at Bleak House. That, too, was part of the plan. Fadi had used him to infiltrate CI on the highest level.

No longer able to lie still, Bourne levered himself off the bed, not without some pain and stiffness. He stretched as much as he could, then padded into the bathroom: a sheet-metal shower, tiny metal sink, porcelain toilet, hexagonal mirror. On a rack were a pair of thin, almost threadbare towels, two large oblong cakes of soap, probably mostly lye.

Reaching up, he turned on the shower, waited for the spray of water to run hot, stepped in.

The afternoon, waning, had turned gray, the sun having lowered beneath dark clouds holding what would soon be a deluge. With the premature darkness a humid wind had sprung up from the southwest, bringing with it imagined hints of the pungent scents of sumac and oregano from the Turkish shore.

Matthew Lerner, standing amidships at the Itkursk’s starboard rail, was smoking a cigarette when he saw Soraya Moore emerge from one of the two
VIP
staterooms on the flagship deck.

He watched her moving away from the stateroom, down a metal stairway to one of the lower decks. He felt the impulse to go after her, to bury the ice pick he carried into the nape of her neck. That would have made him personally happy, but professionally it was suicide-just as it would be to use his gun in the enclosed environment of the ship. He was after Bourne. Killing Soraya Moore would complicate a situation that had already jumped the tracks. He was having to improvise, not the best of scenarios, though in the field improvisation was almost inevitable.

Swiveling adroitly, he faced the rolling waves as she came to the midway landing, for a moment facing in his direction. He pulled on the harsh Turkish cigarette then spun the butt over the side.

He turned back. Soraya Moore had disappeared. There were no colors here. The sea was gunmetal gray, the ship itself painted black and white. Moving quickly across the deck, he climbed the staircase to the flagship deck and the door to the
VIP
stateroom.

Bourne, careful of his wound, soaped up. Aches and muscle tightness sluiced away, along with the layers of sweat and grime. He wished he could stay under the hot water, but this was a working ship, not a luxury liner. The cold water came too quickly, and then the spray stopped altogether, with his skin still partially soap-slicked.

At almost the same moment he saw a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he went into a crouch. His reflexes and the slickness of his skin saved him from having the ice pick wielded by Lerner puncture his neck. As it was, he lurched hard against the back wall of the shower as Lerner rushed him.

Using the heavily callused edge of his hand, Lerner delivered two quick blows to Bourne’s midsection. Designed to incapacitate him so that Lerner could strike again with the ice pick, they landed hard, but not hard enough. Bourne countered a third blow, using the added leverage of the stall back to slam the heel of his left foot into Lerner’s chest just as Lerner was stepping into the shower. Instead of hemming Bourne in, Lerner shot backward, skidding across the tile of the bathroom floor.

Bourne was out of the stall in an instant. He grabbed a new bar of soap, placed it squarely in the center of the towel. Holding the towel at either end, he spun it around, securely embedding the cake. With the two ends of the towel in his right hand, he swung it back and forth. He blocked a vicious edge-hand strike with his left forearm, lifting Lerner’s right arm up and away, creating an opening. He lashed his homemade weapon into Lerner’s midsection.

The towel-wrapped bar of soap delivered a surprisingly wicked blow for which Lerner was unprepared. He staggered backward into the stateroom. Nevertheless, with his body in peak condition, it slowed him only momentarily. Set back on his heels, he waited for Bourne’s attempt to maneuver inside his defense. Instead Bourne whipped his weapon in low, forcing Lerner to take a swipe at it with the ice pick.

At once Bourne stamped down with his left foot on Lerner’s right wrist, trapping it against the stateroom carpet. But Bourne was barefoot; moreover, his foot was still wet and somewhat slick, and Lerner was able to wrench his wrist free. Lerner slashed upward with the ice pick, barely missed impaling Bourne’s foot. He feinted right, drove his right knee into the left side of Bourne’s rib cage.

The pain reverberated through Bourne, his teeth bared in a grimace. The iron-hard knuckles of Lerner’s fist struck him on the opposite shoulder. He sagged and, as he did so, Lerner hooked his heel behind Bourne’s ankle, then jerked him off his feet.

He fell on Bourne, who struck upward. Blood spattered them both as Bourne landed a direct hit on Lerner’s nose, breaking it. As Lerner wiped the blood out of his eyes, Bourne upended him, jamming his fingertips into the spot just at the bottom of Lerner’s rib cage. Lerner grunted in surprise and pain as he felt two of his ribs give.

He roared, letting go with such a flurry of powerful blows that even with both hands free Bourne couldn’t protect himself from all of them. Only a third got through his defenses, but those were enough to seriously weaken his already compromised stamina.

Without knowing how it happened, he found Lerner’s ham-like hand around his throat. Pinned to the floor, he saw the point of the ice pick sweep down toward his right eye.

Only one chance now. He ceded all conscious control to the killer instinct of the Bourne identity. No thought, no fear. He slammed the palms of his hands against Lerner’s ears. The twin blows not only disoriented Lerner but also created a semiairtight seal, so that when Bourne swung his hands apart the resulting pressure ruptured Lerner’s eardrums.

The ice pick stopped in midstrike, trembling in Lerner’s suddenly palsied hand. Bourne swept it aside, grabbed Lerner by the front of his shirt, jerked him down as he brought his head up. The bone of his forehead impacted Lerner’s face just where the bridge of his nose met his forehead.