The Bourne Deception (46 page)

He’d secured more than half the fort and was frankly surprised that he’d not yet come upon even a sign of the targets. Well, one of them was an Egyptian, he’d been told. He didn’t like Egyptians, they smeared you with their honeyed words all the while lying through their teeth. They were like jackals—grinning as they tore the flesh off you.

He turned down a short corridor. When he was no more than halfway along, he heard the sound of the flies buzzing and knew, even though he failed to catch a whiff of rotting flesh, that there must have been a death up ahead of him, and quite recently, too.

Gripping his handgun more tightly, he continued down the hallway with his spine pressed up against one wall, squinting into the gloom. Here and there, sunlight fluttered and twittered like birds in a tree, where the ceiling or wall was cracked or even, in some places, broken open, as if by the hammering fist of a murderous giant.

The sound of the flies had become a hum, as of some great, nebulous creature that waxed and waned as it fed and drowsed. He paused, listening and, in his own unscientific way, counting their number. Something big had died in that room ahead of him, possibly more than one big thing. A human being?

He pulled the trigger of his handgun, the brief light-flare, the report, transforming the entire area. He was like a beast marking its territory, warning other predators of its presence, wanting to instill fear. If the targets were in that room, they were trapped. He knew that room—just as he knew every room in this and the other forts in the area. There was only one entrance and he was five steps away from it.

Then a figure shot out from the open doorway, and he squeezed off four accurate shots in rapid succession that made it dance and jerk.

It was Soraya who followed the dead American Chalthoum had heaved out of the doorway. Swinging her makeshift sling amid the hail of bullets, she let fly its load of quicklime into the face of the shooter. The instant the caustic calcium oxide struck his body fluids—the sweat on his cheeks and the tears in his eyes—a chemical reaction caused the blooming of a terrible heat.

The shooter screamed, dropped his gun, and instinctively clapped his hands to his burning face, trying to scrub off the substance. This only made matters worse for him. Soraya scooped up his gun and shot him in the head, putting him out of his misery, as she would a crippled horse.

Her low whistle brought Chalthoum and Yusef out of the burial chamber.

“One down,” she said. “Three to go.”

Are you all right?” Moira stepped out of the bathtub and helped Humphry Bamber to stand.

“I think I ought to be asking you that question,” he said, glancing with a shudder at the shattered head of the intruder. Then he turned and vomited into the toilet.

Moira turned on the cold water in the sink, drenched a hand towel, and placed it on the back of his neck. He took it and held it against the bridge of her nose as they left the bathroom.

She put her arm around his wide shoulders. “Let’s get you back to somewhere safe.”

He nodded like a lost little boy as they picked their way through the office. They were almost at the door when she glanced at the wall of computers.

“What did you find out? What’s inside Noah’s version of Bardem?”

Bamber broke away, went to the laptop hooked up to all the other equipment, and disconnected it. Closing it, he tucked it under his arm.

“If you don’t see it for yourself, you won’t believe it,” he said as they hurried out of the office.

I’m not interested in Treadstone or what Alex Conklin was up to,” Peter Marks said.

Willard appeared unfazed. “But you are, I assume, interested in saving CI from the Philistines.” It was almost as if he’d anticipated Marks’s response.

“Of course I am.” Marks turned his empty glass over when Willard tried to fill it with the bottle’s last round of whisky. “Do you have something in mind—something, I assume, to do with Black River’s complicity in domestic murder, especially, goddammit, the DCI’s death?”

“The
DCI
is M. Errol Danziger.”

“Don’t remind me,” Marks said sourly.

“I have to. He’s the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in CI’s shop, and believe me when I tell you he’s going to beat all you fine young gentlemen into banana paste if nothing’s done to stop him.”

“What about you?”

“I am Treadstone.”

Marks stared bleakly at the older man. Whether it was all the single-malt he’d consumed or having his face pushed into reality, he felt sick to his stomach. “Go on.”

“No,” Willard said emphatically. “Either you’re in or you’re out, Peter. And before you answer, please understand that there’s no backing out, no room for second thoughts. Once you’re in, that’s it, no matter the cost or the consequences.”

Marks shook his head. “What choice do I have?”

“There’s always a choice.” Willard poured himself the last of the liquor and took a deep sip. “What there isn’t—and this goes for me as well as for you—is an opportunity to look back. From this moment on, there is no past. We move forward, only forward, into the dark.”

“Jesus.” Marks felt a shiver run down his spine. “This sounds like I’m making a deal with the devil.”

“That’s very funny.” Willard smiled and, as if on cue, produced a threepage document, which he spread on the table facing the younger man.

“What the hell is this?”

“Also funny.” Willard placed a pen on the table. “It’s a contract with Treadstone. It’s non-negotiable and, as you can see in clause thirteen, nonrevokable.”

Marks peered at the contract. “How is that enforceable? Will you threaten to take my soul?” He laughed, but it was too brittle to hold any humor. Then he squinted, reading one paragraph after another.

“Jesus,” he said when he was finished. He looked at the pen, then at Willard. “Tell me you have a plan to get rid of M. Errol-fucking-Danziger or I’m out of here right now.”

“Lopping off one head of the hydra will be useless because it will only grow another.” Willard picked up the pen and held it out. “I will get rid of the hydra itself: Secretary of Defense Ervin Reynolds Halliday.”

“Many have tried, including the late Veronica Hart.”

“They all thought they had evidence that he was operating beyond the law, a well-trod path that Halliday knows far better than they did. I’m taking an altogether different route.”

Marks looked deep into the other man’s eyes, trying to judge his seriousness. At length, he took the pen and said, “I don’t care what route we take as long as Halliday ends up being roadkill.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Willard said, “you’ll need to keep that sentiment in mind.”

“Is that a whiff of sulfur I smell?” But Marks’s laugh was distinctly uneasy.

“I know this man.” Yusef brushed the quicklime paste off the dead gunman’s face with the tip of his boot. “His name’s Ahmed, he’s a free-lance assassin who usually works for the Americans or the Russians.” He grunted.

“Now and again at the same time.”

Chalthoum frowned. “Has he worked for the Egyptians before?”

Yusef shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”

“You don’t use him, do you?” Soraya was examining what was left of Ahmed’s face. “I don’t remember seeing his name on any of your reports.”

“I wouldn’t trust this scum to bring me a disk of bread,” Yusef said with a curl of his upper lip. “In addition to being a professional murderer, he’s a liar and a thief, always, even when he was a small boy.”

“Remember,” Chalthoum said with a grim look at Soraya, “I want at least one of them alive.”

“First things first,” she said. “Let’s just concentrate on getting out of here alive ourselves.”

He was still trying without success to brush the odors of quicklime and death off his clothes, but this business allowed Soraya to take the lead—

which, again, was something he deplored. Ever since they’d arrived in Khartoum something had taken possession of him, a sense of protectiveness toward Soraya that clearly made her uncomfortable. Possibly it was being away from Egypt; he was in unknown territory, after all, and he knew only too well that he was most sure of himself in his own territory.

She heard him call softly to her but resisted the urge to turn and look at him. Instead she moved steadily forward in a semi-crouch until she came to the first courtyard. There were positions to the left and right on either wall where snipers would have an excellent field of view. She fired a shot at each spot in turn, but there was no answering fire. That was it for the shooter’s .45, so she dropped it and took out the Glock that Yusef had given her. After double-checking that it was loaded she moved out across the expanse of the grim-looking courtyard, keeping to the shadows thrown by the walls. Not once did she look back, trusting that Amun and Yusef were not far behind her and would provide cover if she got into trouble.

Moments later the second, central courtyard, larger and more intimidating than the first, presented itself. Again she fired shots at the likely sniper positions, again without any result.

“There’s only one more,” Yusef said. “It’s smaller, but because it’s at the front there are more places to defend it.”

Soraya saw at once that he was right, and that no matter what they did they’d never be able to reach the parapets on either wall without being shot dead.

“What now?” she said to Amun.

Before he could think of a reply, Yusef said, “I have an idea. I knew Ahmed all his life, I think I can imitate his voice.” He looked from Chalthoum to Soraya. “Shall I give it a shot?”

“I don’t see how it can hurt,” Chalthoum said, but Yusef didn’t move until Soraya nodded her assent.

Then he brushed by ahead of her and, crouching in the shadowy mouth where the corridor debouched onto the courtyard, he raised his voice. It wasn’t his voice, but one neither of them had heard before.

“It’s Ahmed—please, I’m hurt!” Nothing but echoes. He turned to Soraya.

“Quick!” he whispered. “Give me your shirt.”

“Take mine,” Chalthoum said with a glower.

“Hers will be better,” Yusef said. “They’ll see it’s the female’s.”

Soraya did as he asked, unbuttoning her short-sleeved shirt and handing it over.

“I’ve killed them!” Yusef called in Ahmed’s voice. “See here!” Soraya’s shirt fluttered onto the cobbles of the courtyard like a bird settling onto its nest.

“If you’ve killed them,” a voice came from their left, “come out!”

“I can’t,” Yusef replied, “my leg is broken. I’ve dragged myself this far, but I’ve fallen and I can’t take another step! Please, brothers, come fetch me before I bleed to death!”

For a long time nothing happened. Yusef was about to shout again when Chalthoum cautioned silence.

“Don’t oversell it,” he whispered. “Be patient now.”

More time passed, it was difficult to say how much since in their situation time was bent like taffy, minutes seeming like an hour. At length, they discerned movement on their right. Two men could be seen making their way down to the ground. They moved cautiously, keeping their sides toward the mouth of the hallway. The third man—the one who had queried Yusef—was nowhere in sight. Clearly, he was covering them from his hidden position on the left.

Chalthoum motioned silently to Yusef, who lay down and moved slightly so that the two men could see that one leg was drawn up under the other. Soraya and Chalthoum retreated several steps into the gloom.

“There he is!” one of the men cried to the man covering them—who was, it appeared, their leader. “I can see Ahmed! He’s fallen, just as he said!”

“I don’t see any other movement,” the leader’s voice floated down from the parapet. “Go get him, but make it quick!”

Running in a semi-crouch, the two men approached Yusef.

“Hold it!” their leader said, and they obediently squatted on their hams, their rifles laid across their thighs, their avid eyes on their fallen comrade.

There was movement from the left as the leader abandoned his eyrie, clattering down stone steps to the courtyard.

“Ahmed,” one of the men whispered, “are you all right?”

“No,” said Ahmed. “The pain in my leg is terrible, it’s—”

But he’d said enough at close range for the other man to move back a pace.

“What is it?” his companion said, aiming his rifle into the mouth of the hallway.

“I don’t think that’s Ahmed.”

That was when Chalthoum and Soraya, Glocks firing, moved out on either side of Yusef. The two crouching men were struck immediately, and Chalthoum kicked their weapons away from where they lay sprawled on the ground. The leader, scurrying to find cover where there was none, fired off-balance and Chalthoum went down with a grunt.

Soraya, running, aimed and fired at the leader, but it was Yusef, from his prone position, who shot the leader in the chest. The man spun around and fell. At once Soraya veered toward him.

“Check Amun!” she called to Yusef as she stooped, picking up the leader’s rifle. He was writhing, bleeding from his right side, but he was breathing. The bullet hadn’t punctured a lung.

She knelt down beside him. “Who hired you?”

The man looked up at her and spat in her face.

A moment later she was joined by the two men. Amun had been shot in the thigh, but the bullet had gone through and the wound, Yusef said, looked clean. He’d tied off the area above the wound with a makeshift tourniquet made from her shirt.

“Are you all right?” she said, looking up at Chalthoum.

He nodded in his usual dour way.

“I’ve asked him who hired him,” she said, “but he’s not talking.” “Take Yusef and see about the other two.” Chalthoum was staring intently at the fallen leader.

Soraya knew that look of determination. “Amun…”

“Just give me five minutes.”

They needed the information, there was no question about that. Soraya nodded reluctantly and, with Yusef, walked back to where the other two men lay near the mouth of the hallway. There wasn’t much to see. Both had taken multiple shots to the abdomen and chest. Neither was alive. As they gathered up the rifles, they heard a muffled cry that, in its inhumanity, sent shivers down their spines.

Yusef turned to her. “This Egyptian friend of yours, he can be trusted?”