Page 14 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  They had come through just to the east of the falls, at the edge of a thick slice of the fir forest that continued unabated to the north and east.

  He spent a moment hunkered down in the shadows of the trees, catching his breath. But that was all the time he could spare. He checked Zaim’s vital signs—his pulse, his breathing, his pupils. The man was alive. An examination of the wound showed it to be superficial. Zaim’s hard skull had done its job, protecting him from serious injury.

  Bourne’s problem now, apart from stanching the flow of blood from Zaim’s wound, was drying him off so he wouldn’t freeze to death. Bourne himself had been partially protected by his extreme-weather jumpsuit, though he saw now that it had been abraded badly in several places during his violent tumble down the falls. Water was already freezing against his skin. Unzipping the suit for a moment, he stripped off a sleeve of his shirt, packed it with snow, and wrapped it around Zaim’s wound. Then he hoisted the still-unconscious man over his unbruised shoulder, stumbling up the treacherous bank into the forest. He could feel the cold slowly seeping in at his elbows and shoulder, where the outer layer of his jumpsuit had been shredded.

  Zaim was becoming heavier and heavier, but Bourne pushed on, angling north and east away from the river. A vague memory surfaced—a flash akin to the one he’d had when he’d first alit on Ras Dejen, but more detailed. If he was right, there was another village—larger than the one where he’d found Zaim—several kilometers ahead.

  All at once he was brought up short by a familiar sound: the snorting of a horse. Carefully putting Zaim down against the bole of a tree, he moved cautiously toward the sound. Perhaps five hundred meters ahead, he came upon a small clearing. In it, he saw the gray, its muzzle picking through the snowpack for something to eat. Apparently the animal had followed the course of the river down to this patch of open space. It was just what Bourne needed to carry him and Zaim to safety.

  Bourne was about to move into the glade when the gray’s head came up and its nostrils dilated. What had it smelled? The wind was swirling, bringing with it the scent of danger.

  Bourne thought he understood, and he silently thanked the gray. Moving back into the firs, he began to circle to his left, keeping the clearing in sight as he went, keeping the wind in his face. Perhaps a quarter of the way around, he saw a spot of color, then a slight movement. Heading obliquely toward it, he saw that it was the Amhara whom he had kicked off his horse. This man must have brought the gray down here as bait, to lure them if one or both had survived the waterfall.

  Keeping low, Bourne came at him fast, blindsiding him. He went down with a grunt, got his left hand free as Bourne pummeled him, drew out a curving knife. It slashed down, heading straight for Bourne’s exposed side just above his kidney. Bourne rolled, his torso flicking out of range. At the same time, he locked his ankles around the tribesman’s neck, back and front. With a swift, violent twist Bourne snapped the Amhara’s neck.

  He rose, took from the corpse the knife, sheath, and 9mm Makarov. Then he loped into the clearing, bringing the gray back to where Zaim lay. Slinging the other over the horse’s sturdy back, Bourne swung up and set off through the firs, down the mountainside, heading by memory for the village.

  When Soraya Moore strode into the FIU lab, Kim Lovett was still kicking around forensic evidence with Detective Overton.

  Kim, having taken care of the introductions, got right down to business by bringing Soraya up to date on their case. Then she handed her the set of two porcelain teeth.

  “I found these in the suite’s bathtub drain,” she said. “At first glance, it could easily be mistaken for a dental bridge, but I don’t think it is.”

  Soraya, looking at the interior hollows, knew that she had seen something very similar in Deron’s lab. Examining it more closely, she recognized the high quality of the workmanship. No doubt this was part of a world-class chameleon’s arsenal. She had no doubt what she was holding, and to whom it belonged. She’d thought she was through with all this when Lerner kicked her butt out of Typhon, but now she knew the truth. Maybe she’d known it all along. She wasn’t through with Fadi, not by a long shot.

  “You’re right, Kim,” she said. “It’s a prosthetic.”

  “Prosthetic?” Overton echoed. “I’m not following.”

  “This is a shell,” Soraya told him, “used to slip over perfectly good teeth, not as a substitute for nonviable ones, but to alter the shape of the mouth and cheek line.” She slipped the prosthetic on. Though it was too big for her, both Kim and Overton were astonished to see how much it changed the shape of her mouth and lips. “Which means your Jakob Silver and his brother were using aliases,” she said as she spat out the teeth. To Kim, she said, “Do you mind if I borrow this?”

  “Go on,” Kim said. “But I’ll have to log it out.”

  Overton shook his head. “None of this makes sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense if you know all the facts.” Soraya shared with them the incident outside CI headquarters. “This man who passed as a Cape Town entrepreneur named Hiram Cevik is, in actuality, a Saudi who calls himself Fadi, a terrorist leader with high-level connections to what seems to be an enormous amount of money. What his real name might be we have no idea. He disappeared within blocks of where the Hummer picked him up.” She held up the prosthetic. “Now we know where he went.”

  Kim considered everything Soraya had told them. “Then the remains we found aren’t either brother.”

  “I very much doubt it. The fire seems like a diversion for him slipping out of D.C. Out of the country, for that matter.” Soraya went over to the shallow metal pan in which Kim had placed the bones found in the bathtub. “I do believe we’re looking at all that’s left of Omar, the Pakistani waiter.”

  “Jesus Christ!” At last we’re getting somewhere, Overton thought. “Then which brother was Fadi?”

  Soraya turned to him. “Jakob, undoubtedly. It was Lev who checked into the suite. Fadi was in Cape Town, and then in our custody.”

  Overton was elated. At last his luck was changing. He’d hit the mother lode with these two. Very soon now, he’d have enough intel to bring to Homeland Security. He’d become their newest recruit and their newest hero in one fell swoop.

  Soraya turned back to Kim. “What else did you find?”

  “Very little. Except the accelerant.” Kim picked up a sheaf of computer readouts. “It was carbon disulfide. I can’t remember the last time I encountered it. Arsonists typically use acetone, kerosene, something easily attainable like that.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, in this case carbon disulfide makes a certain kind of sense. It’s more dangerous than the others because of its low flashpoint and the probability of an explosion once it’s ignited. Fadi wanted the windows blown out so that the flames could feed on the added oxygen. But you’d have to be a real professional to use it without blowing yourself up.”

  Soraya took a look at the printout Kim handed her. “That’s Fadi all over. Where would you get it?”

  “You’d have to have access to a manufacturing plant or one of their sources,” Kim said. “It’s used in the manufacture of cellulose, carbon tetrachloride, and other organic sulfur compounds.”

  “Can I borrow your computer?”

  “Help yourself,” Kim said.

  Soraya sat down at Kim’s workstation and brought up the Internet browser. Navigating to the Google Web site, she typed in “carbon disulfide.”

  “Cellulose is used in the manufacture of rayon and cellophane,” she called out to them as she read the text on the screen. “Carbon tet used to be a key ingredient in fire extinguishers and refrigeration, though it’s been abandoned because of its toxicity. Dithiocarbamates, dmit, xanthate are flotation agents in mineral processing. It’s also used to make metham sodium, a soil fumigant.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” Kim said. “You won’t find it in your neighborhood hardware store. You’ve got to go searching for it.”

  Soraya nodded. “And

it presupposes prior knowledge of the compound and its specific characteristics.” She made a few quick notes in her PDA, then got up. “Okay, I’m out of here.”

  “Mind if I tag along?” Overton said. “Until you showed up, this case was a brick wall in my face.”

  “I don’t think so.” Soraya’s glance slid over to Kim. “I was going to tell you when I came in. I’ve been fired.”

  “What?” Kim was aghast. “Why?”

  “The new acting director doesn’t appreciate my streak of rebelliousness. I think he’s out to establish his authority. Today I’m the one he decided to piss on.”

  Kim came over and hugged her in sympathy. “If there’s anything I can do.”

  Soraya smiled. “I know who to call. Thanks.”

  She was too preoccupied to notice the scowl of displeasure that had darkened Detective Overton’s face. He wasn’t going to be thwarted, not when he was so close to his goal.

  Snow had begun to fall by the time Bourne and Zaim reached the village. It was there, nestled in a narrow valley like a ball in a cupped palm, just as Bourne remembered it. The clouds, low and heavy, made the mountains seem small and insignificant, as if they were about to be crushed in a clash of titans. The steeple of the church was the most prominent structure, and Bourne made for it.

  Zaim stirred and groaned. Some time ago, he had awakened, and Bourne had gotten him off the horse just in time for him to vomit copiously among the whistling firs. Bourne made the Amhara eat some snow in order to hydrate him. He was dizzy and weak, but he understood completely when Bourne filled him in on what had happened. Their destination, he had informed Bourne, was a camp just outside the village in Bourne’s memory.

  Now they had arrived at the village. Though Bourne was eager to link up with the person Zaim claimed could take him to Lindros, Zaim’s clothes had already frozen; unless he could be warmed up reasonably quickly, the cloth would take his skin with it when it was removed.

  The gray, which Bourne had urged on at full gallop through knee-high snowbanks, was just about done in by the time they reached the outskirts of the camp. Three Amhara appeared as if out of nowhere, brandishing curved knives similar to the one Bourne had taken off the man whose neck he’d broken.

  Bourne had been expecting them. No campsite would be left unguarded. He sat very still atop the panting, snorting gray while the Amhara drew Zaim down. When they saw who it was, one of them ran into a tent at the center of the campsite. He returned within minutes with an Amhara who was quite obviously the tribal chieftain, the nagus.

  “Zaim,” he said, “what happened to you?”

  “He saved my life,” Zaim muttered.

  “And he, mine.” Bourne slid off the horse. “We were attacked on our way here.”

  If the nagus was surprised that Bourne spoke Amharic, he gave no outward sign of it. “Like all Westerners, you brought your enemies with you.”

  Bourne shivered. “You’re only half right. We were attacked by three Amhara soldiers.”

  “You know who is paying them,” Zaim said weakly.

  The nagus nodded. “Take them both inside to my hut, where it is warm. We will build up the fire slowly.”

  Abbud ibn Aziz stood squinting up at the noxious sky that swirled around Ras Dejen’s north face, listening for the sound of rotors slicing the thin air.

  Where was Fadi? His helicopter was late. Abbud ibn Aziz had been monitoring the weather all morning. With the front moving in, he knew the pilot had an extremely narrow window in which to make his landing.

  In truth, though, he knew it wasn’t the cold or the thin air he silently railed against. It was the fact that he and Fadi were here in the first place. The plan. He knew who was behind it. Only one man could have dreamed up such a high-risk, volatile scheme: Fadi’s brother, Karim al-Jamil. Fadi might be the firebrand face of Dujja, but Abbud ibn Aziz, alone of all of Fadi’s many followers, knew that Karim al-Jamil was the heart of the cadre. He was the chess master, the patient spider spinning multiple webs into the future. Even thinking about what Karim al-Jamil might be planning sent Abbud ibn Aziz’s head spinning. Like Fadi and Karim al-Jamil, he had been educated in the West. He knew the history, politics, and economics of the non-Arab world—a prerequisite, so far as Fadi and Karim al-Jamil were concerned, in stepping up the ladder of command.

  The problem for Abbud ibn Aziz was that he didn’t altogether trust Karim al-Jamil. For one thing, he was reclusive. For another, so far as he knew Karim al-Jamil spoke only to Fadi. That this might not be the case at all—that he knew less than he suspected about Karim al-Jamil—made him all the more uneasy.

  This was his bias against Karim al-Jamil: that he, Fadi’s second in command, his most intimate comrade, was shut out from the inner workings of Dujja. This seemed to him eminently unjust, and though he was utterly loyal to Fadi, still he chafed to be kept on the outside. Of course, he understood that blood was thicker than water—who among the desert tribesmen wouldn’t? But Fadi and Karim al-Jamil were only half Arab. Their mother was English. Both had been born in London after their father had moved his company base there from Saudi Arabia.

  Abbud ibn Aziz was haunted by several questions that part of him did not want answered. Why had Abu Sarif Hamid ibn Ashef al-Wahhib left Saudi Arabia? Why had he taken up with an infidel? Why had he compounded his error by marrying her? Abbud ibn Aziz could find no earthly reason why a Saudi would do such a thing. In truth, neither Fadi nor Karim al-Jamil was of the desert, as he was. They had grown up in the West, been schooled in the ceaselessly throbbing metropolis of London. What did they know of the profound silence, the severe beauty, the clean scents of the desert? The desert, where the grace and wisdom of Allah could be seen in all things.

  Fadi, as befit an older brother, was protective of Karim al-Jamil. This, at least, was something Abbud ibn Aziz could understand. He himself felt the same way about his younger brothers. But in the case of Karim al-Jamil, he had been asking himself for some time into what dark waters he was leading Dujja. Was it a place that Abbud ibn Aziz wanted to go? He had come this far without raising his voice because he was loyal to Fadi. It was Fadi who had indoctrinated him into the terror war they had been forced into by the West’s incursions into their lands. It was Fadi who had sent him to Europe to be schooled, a time in his life he had despised but which had nevertheless proved of benefit. To know the enemy, Fadi had told him many times, is to defeat him.

  He owed Fadi everything; where Fadi led, he would follow. On the other hand, he wasn’t deaf, dumb, and blind. If at some future date when he had more information, he felt that Karim al-Jamil was leading Dujja—and, therefore, Fadi—into ruin, he would speak up, no matter the consequences.

  A harsh, dry wind broke against his cheek. The whirring of the helicopter’s rotors came to him as if from a dream. But it was his own reverie from which he needed to free himself. He looked up, feeling the first snowflakes on his cheeks and lashes.

  He picked out the black dot against the roiled grays of the sky. It bloomed quickly. Swinging his arms back and forth over his head, he stepped back from the landing site. Three minutes later, the helicopter had landed. The door swung open, and Muta ibn Aziz jumped out into the snow and ice.

  Abbud ibn Aziz waited for Fadi to appear, but only his brother came to where he stood, outside the slowing swing of the rotor blades.

  “All went well.” His embrace of his brother was stiff, formal. “Fadi has contacted me.”

  Muta stood silent in the harsh wind.

  For some time, a dispute had carved itself into the frontier of their lives. Like the rift created by an earthquake, the issue had separated them more than either of them would admit. Like an earthquake it had spit up, festering sores that now, years later, had turned to scoria—hard, dry, twisted as scar tissue.

  Muta squinted. “Brother, where did Fadi go after he and I parted?”

  Abbud could not keep the superior edge out of his voice. “His business lies elsewhere.”

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nbsp; Muta grunted. A bitter taste, all too familiar, had flooded his mouth. It is as it has always been. Abbud uses his power to keep me away from Fadi and Karim al-Jamil, the centers of our universe. Thus does he lord it over me. Thus has he sworn me to keep our secret. He is my elder brother. How can I fight him? His teeth ground together. As always, I must obey him all things.

  Muta shivered mightily, moved out of the wind, into the lee of a rock formation. “Tell me, brother, what has been happening here?”

  “Bourne arrived on Ras Dejen this morning. He’s making progress.”

  Muta ibn Aziz nodded. “Then we must move Lindros to a safe location.”

  “It is about to be done,” Abbud said with an icy edge to his voice.

  Muta, his heart full of bile, nodded. “It’s almost over now. Within the next few days, Jason Bourne’s use to us will be at an end.” He smiled deeply, but it was completely self-contained. “As Fadi has said, revenge is sweet. How pleasurable it will be for him to see Jason Bourne dead!”

  The nagus’s hut was surprisingly spacious and comfortable, especially for a structure that was more or less portable. The floor consisted of overlapping rugs. Skins hung on the walls, helping keep in the warmth provided by a fire fueled with dried bricks of dung.

  Bourne, wrapped in a rough wool blanket, sat cross-legged by the fire while the nagus’s men slowly and gingerly undressed Zaim. When that was done, they wrapped him as well, made him sit beside Bourne. Then they served both men steaming cups of hot, strong tea.

  Other men tended to Zaim’s wound, cleaning it, packing it with an herbal poultice, rebandaging it. As this was happening, the nagus sat down next to Bourne. He was a small man, unprepossessing save for the black eyes that burned like twin lamps in his burnished bronze skull. His body was thin and wiry, but Bourne was not fooled. This man would be skilled in the many ways, offensive and defensive, to keep himself and his men alive.