Page 23 of The Bourne Legacy (Jason Bourne 4)

  Spalko leaned forward. Now was the crucial time; he had to sell Sido. He looked to his left and right. When he spoke, he lowered his voice considerably. “Listen very carefully. Peter. I’ve told you more than I perhaps should have. This is all most top-secret, d’you see?”

  Sido, hunched forward in response, nodded his head.

  “In fact, I’m afraid that I’ve violated the confidentiality agreement they made me sign just by telling you this much.”

  “Oh, dear.” Sido’s expression was mournful. “I’ve put you at risk.”

  “Please don’t worry about that, Peter. I’ll be fine,” Spalko said. “Unless, of course, you tell someone.”

  “Oh, but I wouldn’t. Never.”

  Spalko smiled. “I know you wouldn’t, Peter. I trust you, you see.”

  “And I appreciate that, Stepan. You know I do.”

  Spalko had to bite his lip in order not to laugh. Instead, he dove deeper into this farce. “I don’t know what the test is, Peter, because they haven’t told me,” he said so softly that the other was obliged to lean in so close their noses were almost touching. “And I wouldn’t ask.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But I believe—and you must also—that these people are doing their utmost to keep us safe in an increasingly unsafe world.” What it always boiled down to, Spalko thought, was a matter of trust. But for the patsy—in this case, Sido—to be taken in, he had to know that you had given him your trust. After that, you could fleece him of everything he owned and he’d never suspect it was you who’d done it to him. “I say, whatever they have to do, we must help them in any way we can. This is what I told them when they first approached me.”

  “It’s what I would’ve told them, as well.” Sido wiped the perspiration off his unremarkable upper lip. “Believe me, Stepan, if you can count on anything you can count on that.”

  The U.S. Naval Observatory at Massachusetts Avenue and 34th Street was the official source for all standard time in the United States. It was one of the few places in the country where the moon, the stars and the planets were kept under constant observation. The largest telescope on the property was more than one hundred years old and was still in use. Peering through it in 1877, Dr. Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars. Nobody knows why he chose to call them Deimos (Anxiety) and Phobos (Fear), but the DCI knew that when his melancholia lay most deeply about him, he was drawn to the observatory. That was why he’d had an office set up for himself deep in the heart of the building, not far from Dr. Hall’s telescope.

  It was here that Martin Lindros found him on a closed-circuit teleconference linkup with Jamie Hull, head of the U.S. security detail in Reykjavík.

  “Feyd al-Saoud I’m not concerned with,” Hull was saying in his rather supercilious voice. “The Arabs don’t know shit about modern-day security, so they’re happy to take our lead.” He shook his head. “It’s the Russian, Boris Illyich Karpov, who’s giving me a royal pain in the ass. He questions everything. If I say white, he says black. I think the fucker gets off on arguing.”

  “Are you saying you can’t handle one goddamn Russian security analyst, Jamie?”

  “Uh, what?” Hull’s blue eyes looked startled and his ginger mustache jumped up and down. “No, sir. Not at all.”

  “Because I can have you replaced in a heartbeat.” The DCI’s voice projected a thorny note of cruelty.

  “No, sir.”

  “And believe me, I will. I’m in no fucking mood for—”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll get Karpov under control.”

  “See that you do.” Lindros could hear the sudden weariness in the old warrior’s voice, hoped Jamie couldn’t detect it through the electronic connection. “We need a solid front before, during and after the president’s visit. Is that clear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “No sign of Jason Bourne, I suppose.”

  “None whatsoever, sir. Believe me, we’ve been extra vigilant.”

  Lindros, aware that the DCI had gotten all the information he required for the moment, cleared his throat.

  “Jamie, my next appointment just showed,” the DCI said without turning around. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow.” He toggled off the teleconferencer, sat with his hands steepled, staring at a large color photograph of the planet Mars and its two uninhabitable moons.

  Lindros shrugged off his raincoat, came and sat down beside his boss. The room the DCI had chosen was small, cramped and over-hot even in the depths of winter. A portrait of the president was on one wall. Opposite was a single window through which tall pines could be seen, black and white, all detail washed out of them by the brilliant security floodlights. “The news from Paris is good,” he said. “Jason Bourne is dead.”

  The DCI picked up his head, a certain animation flooding features that had been slack moments ago. “They got him? How? I hope the bastard died in a world of pain.”

  “Chances are he did, sir. He died in a highway collision on the Al just northwest of Paris. The motorcycle he was driving rammed head-on into an eighteen-wheeler. A Quai d’Orsay officer was an eyewitness.”

  “My God,” the DCI breathed. “Nothing left but an oil slick.” His brows knitted together. “There can be no doubt?”

  “Until we have a confirmed identification, there’s always doubt,” Lindros said. “We forwarded Bourne’s dental records and a sample of his DNA, but the French authorities tell me there was a terrific explosion, and in the aftermath the fire burned so hotly that they fear even the bones might not have survived. In any case, it’s going to take them a day or two to sift through the scene of the accident. They’ve assured me that they’ll be in touch as soon as they have further information.”

  The DCI nodded.

  “And Jacques Robbinet is unharmed,” Lindros added.

  “Who?”

  “The French Minister of Culture, sir. He was a friend of Conklin’s and a sometime asset. We were afraid he was Bourne’s next target.”

  The two men sat very still. The DCI’s eyes had turned inward. Perhaps he was thinking of Alex Conklin, perhaps he was contemplating the roles anxiety and fear played in modern life, wondering how Dr. Hall had been so prescient. He had gotten into clandestine work in the mistaken notion that it would help alleviate the anxiety and fear with which he had seemed to have been born. Instead, operating in the twilight had done just the opposite. And yet he had never contemplated leaving his profession. He could not imagine life without it; his very being was defined by who he was and what he had done in the sub-rosa world invisible to civilians.

  “Sir, if I may say so, it’s late.”

  The DCI sighed. “Tell me something I don’t know, Martin.”

  “I think it’s time you went home to Madeleine,” Lindros said softly.

  The DCI passed a hand across his face. All off a sudden he was very tired. “Maddy’s at her sister’s in Phoenix. The house is dark tonight.”

  “Go home anyway.”

  As Lindros rose, the DCI turned his head in his deputy’s direction. “Martin, listen to me, you may think this Bourne business is over, but it isn’t.”

  Lindros had taken up his raincoat; now he paused. “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Bourne may be dead, but in the last few hours of his life he managed to make monkeys of us.”

  “Sir—”

  “Public spectacles. We can’t have that. In this day and age, there’s just too much damn scrutiny. And where there’s scrutiny, there are hard questions asked, and these questions unless immediately put to rest inevitably lead to grave consequences.” The DCI’s eyes sparked. “We are lacking only one element to wrap up this sorry episode and consign it to the dustbin of history.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “We need a scapegoat, Martin, someone to whom the shit will stick completely, leaving us smelling like rosebuds in May.” He looked hard at his DDCI. “Do you have someone like that, Martin?”

  A cold ball of anxiety had

formed in the pit of Lindros’ stomach.

  “Come, come, Martin,” the DCI said with asperity, “do speak up.”

  Still, Lindros looked at him mutely. He seemed as if he could not get his jaws to work.

  “Of course you do, Martin,” the DCI snapped.

  “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

  The DCI winced inside at the accusation. Not for the first time, he was grateful that his boys were safely away from this business where he would have had to hold them down. No one was going to surpass him; he’d make sure of that. “If you won’t name him, I will. Detective Harris.”

  “We can’t do that to him,” Lindros said tightly. He could feel the anger fizzing in his head like a just-popped can of soda.

  “We? Who said anything about we, Martin? This was your assignment. I made that clear from the get-go. Now it’s entirely up to you to assign the blame.”

  “But Harris didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The DCI arched an eyebrow. “I very much doubt that, but even if it’s true, who cares?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “Very well, Martin. Then I suppose you’ll be taking the blame for the fiascos in Old Town and Washington Circle yourself.”

  Lindros’ lips clamped shut. “This is my choice?”

  “I don’t see any others, do you? The bitch-woman intends to extract her pound of flesh from me one way or the other. If I have to sacrifice someone, I would damn well rather it be some aging detective in the Virginia State Police than my own DDCI. If you fell on your own sword, how do you suppose that would reflect on me, Martin?”

  “Christ,” Lindros said, in a seething rage, “how in the hell did you manage to survive this snakepit for so long?”

  The DCI stood up, drew on his overcoat. “What makes you think I have?”

  Bourne arrived at the Gothic stone edifice of Matthias Church at eleven-forty. He spent the following twenty minutes reconnoitering the area. The air was crisp and chill, the sky clear. But near the horizon a bank of thick clouds roiled and on the freshening wind the damp musk of rain came to him. Now and again a sound or a scent fired something in his damaged memory. He was certain that he had been here before, though when and on what mission he couldn’t say. Once again, as he touched the void of loss and longing, he thought of Alex and Mo so strongly he might have been able to conjure them up this very moment.

  With a grimace, he went on with his task, securing the area, making sure as best he could that the rendezvous site wasn’t under enemy surveillance.

  At the stroke of midnight, he approached the enormous southern facade of the church from which rose the eighty-meter Gothic stone tower, laden with gargoyles. A young woman was standing on the lowest step. She was tall, slim, strikingly beautiful. Her long red hair shone in the streetlights. Behind her, over the portal was a fourteenth-century relief of the Virgin Mary. The young woman asked him his name.

  “Alex Conklin,” he replied.

  “Passport, please,” she said as crisply as an Immigration official.

  He handed it over, watched her as she examined it with her eyes and the pad of her thumb. She had interesting hands; they were slender, long-fingered, strong, blunt-nailed. A musician’s hands. She could not be more than thirty-five.

  “How do I know you’re really Alexander Conklin?” she said.

  “How does one know anything absolutely?” Bourne said. “Faith.”

  The woman snorted. “What’s your first name?”

  “It says right on the pass—”

  She gave him a hard look. “I mean your real first name. The one you were born with.”

  “Alexsei,” Bourne said, remembering that Conklin was a Russian emigré.

  The young woman nodded. She had a well-sculpted face dominated by green Magyar eyes, large and hooded, and wide, generous lips. There was about her a certain sharp-edged primness, but at the same time a fin de siècle sensuality that in its sub-rosa nature hinted intriguingly of a more innocent century when what was kept unspoken was often more important than what was freely expressed. “Welcome to Budapest, Mr. Conklin. I’m Annaka Vadas.” She lifted a shapely arm, gestured. “Please come with me.”

  She led him across the plaza fronting the church and around the corner. In the shadowed street, a small wooden door with ancient iron bands was barely visible. She took out a small flashlight, snapped it on. It produced a very powerful beam of light. Taking an old-fashioned key from her purse, she inserted it in the lock, turned it first one way, then the other. The door opened at her touch.

  “My father is waiting for you inside,” she said. They entered the vast interior of the church. By the wavering beam of the flashlight, Bourne could see that the plastered walls were iced with colored ornamental design. The frescoes depicted the lives of Hungarian saints.

  “In 1541 Buda fell to the invading Turks and for the next one hundred fifty years the church became the main mosque of the city,” she said. Playing the flashlight over her subject. “In order to serve their needs, the Turks stripped the furnishings and whitewashed the magnificent frescoes. Now, however, everything has been restored to the way it was in the thirteenth century.”

  Bourne saw dim light up ahead. Annaka led him into the northern section, where there was a series of chapels. In the one nearest to the chancel the sarcophagi of tenth-century Hungarian king, Bélla III, and his wife, Anne of Châtillon, lay in ghostly precision. In the former crypt, beside a row of medieval carvings, stood a figure in the shadows.

  János Vadas extended his hand. As Bourne moved to grasp it, three glowering men appeared from out of the shadows. Bourne, very quick, drew the gun. This only produced a smile from Vadas.

  “Look at the firing pin, Mr. Bourne. Did you think I would provide you with a gun that worked?”

  Bourne saw that Annaka had a gun trained on him.

  “Alexsei Conklin was a long-time friend of mine, Mr. Bourne. And, in any case, your face is on the news.” He had a hunter’s calculating face, all dark and brooding brows, a square jaw and glittering eyes. In his youth he had had a distinct widow’s peak, but now, in his mid-sixties, time had eroded his hairline, leaving a gleaming triangular promontory on his forehead. “It’s believed you killed Alexsei and another man, a Dr. Panov, I believe. For Alexsei’s death alone I would be justified in ordering you killed here and now.”

  “He was an old friend, more, even—a mentor.”

  Vadas looked sad, resigned. He sighed. “And you turned on him, I suppose, because you, like everyone else, want what is in Felix Schiffer’s mind.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “No, of course you don’t,” Vadas said with a good degree of skepticism.

  “How do you think I knew Alex’s real name? Alexsei and Mo Panov were friends.”

  “Then killing them would have been an act of utter insanity.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It is Mr. Hazas’ considered opinion that you’re insane,” Vadas said calmly. “You remember Mr. Hazas, the hotel manager you almost beat to a pulp. A madman, I believe he called you.”

  “So that’s how you knew to call me,” Bourne said. “I may have twisted his arm a little too hard, but I knew he was lying.”

  “He was lying for me,” Vadas said with a touch of pride.

  Under the watchful gaze of Annaka and the three men, Bourne went across to Vadas, held out the useless gun. The moment Vadas reached for it, Bourne spun him around. At the same instant he drew his ceramic gun, pressed it hard against Vadas’ temple. “Did you really think I would use an unknown gun without pulling it apart and putting it back together again?”

  Directing himself to Annaka, he said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, “Unless you want your father’s brains spattered all over five centuries of history, put down your gun. Don’t look at him; do as I tell you!”

  Annaka put down her gun.

  “Kick it over here.”

  She did as he ordered.

  None of

the three men had made a move, and now they wouldn’t. Bourne kept one eye on them just the same. He took the muzzle away from Vadas’ temple, let him go.

  “I could have shot you dead, if that had been my wish.”

  “And I would have killed you,” Annaka said fiercely.

  “I’ve no doubt you’d have tried,” Bourne said. He put up the ceramic gun, showing her and Vadas’ men that he had no intention of using it. “But these are hostile acts. We’d have to be enemies to make them.” Picking up Annaka’s gun, he handed it to her, grips first.

  Without a word, she took it, aimed it at him.

  “What have you turned your daughter into, Mr. Vadas? She would kill for you, yes, but it also seems as if she would kill too quickly and for no reason at all.”

  Vadas stepped between Annaka and Bourne, pushed her gun down with his hand. “I’ve enough enemies as it is, Annaka,” he said softly.

  Annaka put away her gun, but her flashing eyes still held a hostility Bourne noted.

  Vadas turned to Bourne. “As I said, for you, killing Alexsei would have been an act of insanity, and yet you seem to be the very opposite of a madman.”

  “I was set up, made to be the patsy for the killings, so that the real killer would remain free.”

  “Interesting. Why?”

  “I came here to find that out.”

  Vadas stared hard at Bourne. Then he looked around him, raised his arms. “I would have met Alexsei here, you know, had he lived. You see, this is a place of great significance. Here, at the dawn of the fourteenth century, once stood Buda’s first parish church. The huge pipe organ you see up there on the balcony played at the two weddings of King Matthias. The last two kings of Hungary, Francis Joseph I and Charles IV, were crowned on this spot,. Yes, there’s great history here, and Alexsei and I, we were going to change history.”

  “With the help of Dr. Felix Schiffer, wasn’t it?” Bourne said.

  Vadas had no time to answer. Just then, an echoing roar sounded and he was thrown backward, arms outstretched. Blood oozed from a bullethole in his forehead. Bourne grabbed Annaka, dived onto the stonework paving. Vadas’ men turned and, fanning out, began to return fire as they headed for cover. One was shot almost immediately, and he skidded over the marble floor, dead before he collapsed. A second gained the edge of a bench and was desperately trying to get behind it when he, too, was felled by a bullet that entered his spine. He arched back, his weapon crashing to the floor.