The Bourne Betrayal (60 page)

He reached for Fadi. As he did so, he heard a ferocious roar from farther down the corridor. Fadi appeared to be trying to shake off the effects of his ruptured eardrum, blood leaking out of his right ear. Bourne reached for him, felt the bite of Fadi’s serpent-bladed knife as it drew blood along the back of his hand.

Tearing off his belt, Bourne wrapped it around and around his knuckles, using the layers of leather to fend off Fadi’s knife thrusts. Inevitably, however, the struck leather began to come apart. A moment more and he would be defenseless.

The roaring increased to a howl. What was coming? Fadi, seeing his advantage, stepped up his attack with precise swipes, lent unnatural power by his desperation. Bourne was forced back toward the surgery.

Then out of the corner of his eye he saw a blurred movement. Someone had darted from the doorway to the surgery. A woman: Katya. Tears were streaming down her face. Her hands were red with blood-Martin’s blood. It was she who had attempted to escape with Martin. But then Fadi had found them. Why hadn’t Martin led her to shelter as Bourne had warned him to do? Too late now.

“Look what they’ve done to him!” Katya wailed.

Bourne saw something metallic gleaming in her hand.

Wading out into the corridor, Katya came toward him. At that moment the roar reached a fever pitch. Katya turned her head to stare down along the corridor. Bourne, following her gaze, saw a wall of water filling the corridor from floor to ceiling, heading toward them.

Fadi’s knife blade swept across his makeshift shield one last time. All the layers fell away, baring his bloody knuckles.

“Get back!” he shouted to Katya. “Take shelter!”

Instead she continued to wade toward him. But now the water was waist-deep, the rush of it so powerful that she could no longer make headway. Fadi tried for a killing stab, but Bourne kicked out through the rushing water, throwing him off balance. The blade turned; Bourne’s bruised defensive forearm struck the flat of it, sending it up and away.

Katya, realizing she was stymied, tossed the metallic object toward Bourne.

He reached out, caught the metallic implement at its midsection-a Collins twenty-two-centimeter amputating knife. In one smooth motion he reversed it, plunged the wicked blade into the soft spot at the base of Fadi’s throat, then drove it downward through his collarbone, into his chest.

Fadi stared at him, openmouthed. At the moment of his death, he was paralyzed, helpless, without thought. Frozen in time. His eyes, in the process of glazing over, revealed that he was trying to understand something. In this, too, he failed.

The roiling wall of water was almost upon them. There was nothing else Bourne could do except clamber up Fadi’s split upper torso. He locked his curled fingers through the holes in the
HVAC

vent in the ceiling, levered himself up. Then he reached back for Katya. Afterward, he never knew whether she could have made it to him. She stood there, staring at nothing while he shouted to her.

He was about to go after her when the water struck him with the fury of a giant’s fist, knocking all the breath out of him. Howling like the demon that lived atop Ras Dejen, it ripped Fadi’s corpse from under him and swept Katya into its furious heart. It roared and foamed through the Dujja facility like Noah’s flood, drowning all in its wake, scouring everything clean.

THERE
WAS
in Feyd al-Saoud’s brave heart a rising conviction that one day-not soon, perhaps not even in his lifetime-the war against the tribespeople intent on setting the world on fire in order to destroy his country would be won. It would take great sacrifice, stern conviction, an iron will, as well as unconventional alliances with infidels like Jason Bourne, who had caught a glimpse of the Arab mind and understood what they had witnessed. Most of all, it would take patience and perseverance during the inevitable setbacks. But the reward would be days such as this one.

Having used a second set of C-4 charges to divert the underground river, his men entered the Dujja facility via the blast hole. He stood on the edge of the camouflaged helipad, which looked like the bed of a flat-bottomed well. Above him the opening in the rock widened as it neared the top, which had over it the specially designed camouflage material that made it indistinguishable from the rock around it.

The waters had receded, swallowed at last by the huge drains built into the facility’s lower level.

Directly in front of Feyd al-Saoud, in a raised platform undamaged by the flood, squatted the helicopter meant, he was certain, to take Fadi to his rendezvous with the nuclear device. Another of his men held the pilot under guard.

Though he very much wanted to know how Bourne had made out, he was understandably reluctant to leave the device to anyone else’s care. Besides, the fact that he was standing here, rather than watching the copter lifting off as Fadi made his escape, spoke eloquently of Bourne’s victory. Still, he’d sent his men in to find his friend. He very much wanted to share this moment with him.

However, the individual they brought back was an older man with a high, wide forehead, prominent nose, and steel-rimmed glasses, one lens of which was cracked.

“I ask you for Jason Bourne and you bring me this.” Feyd al-Saoud’s annoyance masked his alarm. Where was Jason? Was he lying injured somewhere in the washed-out bowels of this hellhole? Was he still alive?

“The man says his name is Costin Veintrop,” the team leader said.

Hearing his name amid the blur of fast-paced Arabic, the newcomer said, “Doctor Veintrop.” He followed this up with something in such poor Arabic as to be incomprehensible.

“Speak English, please,” Feyd al-Saoud said in his impeccably accented British.

Looking visibly relieved, Veintrop said: “Thank God you’re here. My wife and I have been held prisoner.”

Feyd al-Saoud stared at him, mute as the Sphinx.

Veintrop cleared his throat. “Please let me go. I need to find my wife.”

“You tell me you’re Dr. Costin Veintrop. You tell me that you and your wife were being held prisoner here.” Feyd al-Saoud’s growing anxiety as to his friend’s fate was making him ever more testy. “I know who was being held prisoner here, and it wasn’t you.”

Veintrop, properly cowed, turned to the man who’d brought him here. “My wife, Katya, is in the facility. Can you tell me if you’ve found her?”

The group leader, taking his cue from his chief, stared at Veintrop in stony silence.

“Ah, God,” Veintrop moaned, lapsing in shock and worry into his native Romanian. “My God in heaven.”

Completely unmoved, Feyd al-Saoud gave him a look of disdain before turning at the sound of movement behind him.

“Jason!”

At the sight of his friend, he rushed to the entrance of the helipad. With Bourne was another of Feyd al-Saoud’s detachment. They were supporting between them a tall, well-built man whose face and head looked as if they had been put through a meat grinder.

“Allah!” Feyd al-Saoud cried. “Is Fadi dead or alive?”

“Dead,” Bourne said.

“Who is this, Jason?”

“My friend Martin Lindros,” Bourne said.

“Ah, no!” At once, the security chief called for his group surgeon. “Jason, the nuclear device is in the heli. Incredibly, it’s contained within a slim black briefcase. How did Fadi manage that?”

Bourne stared at Veintrop balefully for a moment. “Hello, Dr. Sunderland-or I should say Costin Veintrop.”

Veintrop winced.

Feyd al-Saoud raised his eyebrows. “You know this man?”

“We’ve met once before,” Bourne said. “The doctor is an extremely talented scientist with a number of specialities. Including miniaturization.”

“So he was the one who built the circuits that allowed the nuke to fit into the briefcase.” Feyd alSaoud’s expression was dark, indeed. “He claimed that he and his wife were prisoners.”

“I was a prisoner,” Veintrop insisted. “You don’t understand, I-”

“Now you know about him.” Bourne talked over his response. “As for his wife-”

“Where is she?” Veintrop gasped. “Do you know? I want my Katya!”

“Katya is dead.” Bourne said this bluntly, almost brutally. He had no sympathy to spend on the man who had connived with Fadi and Karim to destroy him from the inside out. “She saved me. I tried to save her, but the wall of water took her.”

“That’s a lie!” Veintrop, white-faced, fairly shouted. “You have her! You have her!”

Bourne grabbed him and took him into the chamber from which he’d first come. In the aftermath of the deluge, the Saudi team was lining up the corpses they’d found. Next to Fadi’s was Katya’s. Her head lay at an unnatural angle.

Veintrop gave out a low moan that seemed almost inhuman. Bourne, watching him sink to his knees, felt a pang for the beautiful young woman who had sacrificed herself so that he could kill Fadi. She had wanted Fadi’s death, it seemed, as much as he did.

His gaze slid over to Fadi. The eyes, still open, seemed to stare at Bourne with a hateful fury. Bourne took out his cell. Crouched down, he took several shots of Fadi’s face. When he was finished, he rose and dragged Veintrop back to the helipad.

Bourne addressed Feyd al-Saoud. “Is the pilot inside the heli?”

The security chief nodded. “He’s under guard.” He pointed. “And here is the case.”

“Are you certain that is the device?” Veintrop said.

Feyd al-Saoud looked to his expert, who nodded. “I’ve opened the case. It’s a nuclear bomb, all right.”

“Well, then,” Veintrop said with an oddly vibrant note to his voice, “I’d open it again if I were you. Perhaps you haven’t seen everything inside.”

Feyd al-Saoud glanced at Bourne, who nodded. “Open it,” the security chief said to his man.

The man laid the case carefully down on the concrete floor and snapped the lid open.

“Look on the left side,” Veintrop said. “No, nearer the rear.”

The Saudi craned his neck, then recoiled involuntarily. “A timer’s been activated.”

“That happened when you opened the case without using the code.”

Bourne recognized the note in his voice: It was triumph.

“How much time?” Feyd al-Saoud said.

“Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.”

“I created the circuit,” Veintrop said. “I can stop it.” He looked from one man to the other. “In return, I want my freedom. No prosecution. No negotiation. A new life, paid in full.”

“Is that all?” Bourne hit him so hard that Veintrop bounced off the wall. He caught him on the rebound. “Knife,” he said.

Feyd al-Saoud knew what was required now. He handed one to Bourne.

The moment Bourne took possession of the knife he buried the blade just above Veintrop’s kneecap.

Veintrop screamed. “What have you done?” Then he began to weep uncontrollably.

“No, Doctor, it’s what you’ve done.” Bourne crouched down beside him, holding the bloody blade in his line of vision. “You’ve got just under four minutes to disable the timer.”

Veintrop, holding his ruined knee, rocked back and forth on his backside. “What . . . what about my terms?”

“Here are my terms.” Bourne flicked the blade and Veintrop screamed again.

“All right, all right!”

Bourne looked up. “Put the open case in front of him.”

When that had been done, Bourne said, “It’s all yours, Doctor. But rest assured I’m going to be watching every move you make.”

Bourne stood, saw Feyd al-Saoud staring at him, his heavy lips pushed out in a silent whistle of relief.

Bourne watched while Veintrop worked on the timer. It took him just over two minutes, by Bourne’s wristwatch. At the end of that time, he sat back, arms folded protectively around his ruined knee.

Feyd al-Saoud signed for his man to take a look.

“The wires are cut,” the man said. “The timer’s dead. There’s no chance of detonation.”

Veintrop had returned to his mindless rocking. “I need a painkiller,” he said dully.

Feyd al-Saoud called for his surgeon, then went to take possession of the nuclear device. Bourne got to it before him.

“I’m going to need this to get to Karim.”

The security chief frowned deeply. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m taking the route Fadi would have taken to Washington,” Bourne said in a tone that brooked no interference.

Even so, Feyd al-Saoud said, “Do you think that’s wise, Jason?”

“I’m afraid at this juncture wise doesn’t enter into it,” Bourne replied. “Karim has put himself into a position of such power inside CI he’s all but untouchable. I’ve got to go another route.”

“I expect you have a plan, then.”

“I always have a plan.”

“All right. My surgeon will take charge of your friend.”

“No,” Bourne said. “Martin comes with me.”

Again, Feyd al-Saoud recognized Bourne’s steely tone of voice. “Then my surgeon will accompany you.”

“Thank you,” Bourne said.

Feyd al-Saoud helped his friend load Martin Lindros into the helicopter. While Bourne laid down the law to Fadi’s pilot, the security chief sent his man off the copter, then knelt to help his surgeon make Lindros as comfortable as possible.

“How long does he have?” Feyd al-Saoud said softly, for it was clear Lindros was dying.

The surgeon shrugged. “An hour, give or take.”

Bourne was finished talking to the pilot, who now slipped into his chair. “I need you to do something for me.”

Feyd al-Saoud rose up. “Anything, my friend.”

“First, I need a phone. Mine is fried.”

The security chief was handed a cell by one of his men. Bourne transferred the chip that held all his phone numbers into the new model.

“Thanks. Now I want you to phone your contacts in the U.S. government, tell them that the plane I’ll be taking is a Saudi diplomatic mission. As soon as I speak with the pilot, I’ll send you the flight plan. I don’t want any problems with Customs and Immigration.”

“Consider it done.”

“Then I want you to call CI, tell them the same thing. Only give them an
ETA
forty minutes later than the actual one I’ll give you when the pilot has checked the weather.”

“My call to CI will alert the impostor-”