Page 15 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  “My name is Kabur,” the nagus said. “Zaim tells me your name is Bourne.” He pronounced it in two syllables: Bohorn.

  Bourne nodded. “I’ve come to Ras Dejen to find my friend, who was on one of the warbirds that were shot down nearly a week ago. You know of this?”

  “I do,” Kabur said.

  His hand moved to his chest, and he held out something silver for Bourne to see. It was the pilot’s dog tags.

  “He has no more need of them,” Kabur said simply.

  Bourne’s heart sank. “He’s dead?”

  “As close as can be.”

  “What about my friend?”

  “They took him along with this man.” The nagus offered Bourne a wooden bowl of heavily spiced stew into which a rough semicircle of unleavened bread had been stuck. While Bourne ate, using the bread as a spoon, Kabur went on. “Not by us, you understand. We are nothing in this, though, as you have already witnessed, some have taken money from them in return for service.” He shook his head. “But it is evil, a form of enslavement for which some have paid the ultimate price.”

  “They.” Bourne, having eaten his fill, put the bowl aside. “Who, precisely, are they?”

  Kabur tilted his head. “I feel surprise. I would have expected you to know far more about them than I. They come to us from across the Gulf of Aden. From Yemen, I imagine. But they aren’t Yemeni, no. God alone knows where they make their base. Some are Egyptian, others Saudi, still others Afghani.”

  “And the leader?”

  “Ah, Fadi. He is Saudi.” The nagus’s fierce black eyes had gone opaque. “We are, to a man, afraid of Fadi.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because he is powerful, because he is cruel beyond imagining. Because he carries death in the palm of his hand.”

  Bourne thought of the uranium transshipments. “You have seen evidence of the death he carries.”

  The nagus nodded. “With my own eyes. One of Zaim’s sons—”

  “The boy in the cave?”

  Kabur swung toward Zaim, in whose eyes was a sea of pain. “A wayward son who could not hold advice in his head. Now we cannot touch him, even to bury him.”

  “I can do that,” Bourne said. Now he understood why Alem was hiding out in the Chinook closest to the cave: He wanted to be near his brother. “I can bury him up there, near the summit.”

  The nagus was silent. But Zaim’s eyes had turned liquid as they reengaged Bourne’s. “That would be a true blessing—for him, for me, for my family.”

  “It will be done, this I swear,” Bourne said. He turned back to Kabur. “Will you help me find my friend?”

  The nagus hesitated a moment while he studied Zaim. At length, he sighed. “Will finding your friend hurt Fadi?”

  “Yes,” Bourne said. “It will hurt him badly.”

  “This is a very difficult journey you ask us to take with you. But because of my friend, because of his bond to you, because of your promise to him, I am honor-bound to grant your request.”

  He raised his right hand and a man brought a device similar to a hookah. “We will smoke together, to seal the bargain we have made.”

  Soraya had every intention of going home, but somehow she found herself driving into the Northeast quadrant of D.C. It was only when she turned onto 7th Street that she knew why she had come here. Making one more turn, she arrived outside Deron’s house.

  For a moment, she sat, listening to the engine ticking. Five or six of the tough-looking crew infested the stoop of the house to the left but, though they observed her with gimlet eyes, they made no move to stop her as she got out of the car and went up the steps to Deron’s front door.

  She knocked on the front door several times. Waited, then knocked again. There was no answer. Hearing someone coming up the walk, she turned, expecting Deron. Instead she encountered a tall, lean young man, one of the crew.

  “Yo, Miss Spook, name’s Tyrone. What yo doin’ here?”

  “Do you know where Deron is?”

  Tyrone kept a neutral expression. “Yo could see me instead, Miss S.”

  “I would, Tyrone,” she said carefully, “if you could instruct me on the uses of carbon disulfide.”

  “Huh, yo think I’m a useless nigga, doantcha?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know anything about you.”

  Without a change in expression, he said, “Walk wid me.”

  Soraya nodded. Instinctively she knew that any hesitation on her part would reflect badly on her.

  Together they went down the walk and turned right, past the stoop where members of the crew were perched like a murder of crows.

  “Deron, he down wid his daddy. Won’t be back for coupla days.”

  “No lie?”

  “True dat.” Tyrone pursed his lips. “So. What yo want ta know ’bout me? Maybe my druggie mama? Is it my daddy you’re interested in, rottin’ away in prison? Or my younger sister nursin’ a baby when she should be in high school? My older brother makin’ shit-per-week working for the man as a motorman in the Metro? Shee-it, yo mustave heard all that sob stuff before, so yo doan need t’hear it again.”

  “It’s your life,” Soraya said. “That makes it different from anything I’ve heard.”

  Tyrone snorted, but by his look she knew he was pleased.

  “Me, though I was trained for the street, I was born with an engineer’s mind. What’s that mean?” He shrugged and pointed into the distance. “Down Florida, they puttin’ up a shitload a high-rises. I go there every chance I get, see how it all goin’ up, y’know?”

  Soraya met his eyes for a moment. “Will you think me a fool if I say there’re ways for you to take advantage of your mind.”

  “Fo yo maybe.” A slow smile spread across his face, an expression considerably older than his years. “We walkin’ in my prison, girl.”

  Soraya considered answering that, but decided she’d pushed him far enough for the moment. “I gotta go.”

  Tyrone pursed his lips. “Yo, just so you know, yo. It’s about the car that followed you here.”

  Soraya stopped in her tracks. “Tell me you’re putting me on.”

  His head swiveled, and he looked at her as a cobra stares down its prey. “Straight dope, like before.”

  Soraya was furious with herself. She’d been so wrapped up in her own personal fog, she hadn’t even considered that someone might tail her. She had failed to check, which was usually second nature to her. Obviously she was more upset about that sonovabitch Lerner benching her than she’d realized. Now she’d paid the price for her lack of vigilance.

  “Tyrone, I owe you one.”

  He shrugged. “It’s what Deron pays me t’do. Protection doan come cheap, but loyalty ain’t got no price.”

  She looked at him, but for the first time seemed to really see him. “Where is it? The car that tailed me?”

  They began to walk again. “Up ahead, at the corner of Eighth,” Tyrone said. “Far side, so the driver get a good look at what yo up to.” He shrugged. “My crew’ll take care a him.”

  “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, Tyrone.” She gave him a serious look. “But I brought him here. It’s on me.”

  “Yo, I admire that, yo.” He stopped, stood facing her for a minute. His expression was as serious as hers. There was no mistaking the grim determination in it. Around here, he was the immovable object. “Understand, it’s gotta be done ’fore he get any idea ’bout Deron. Afta that, nuthin can save him. Even yo.”

  “I’ll take care of it right now.” She ducked her head, abruptly shy. “Thanks.”

  Tyrone nodded, headed back to his crew. Taking a deep breath, she kept on the way she had been going, down to the corner of 8th Street, where Detective Overton sat in his car, scribbling on a slip of lined paper.

  She rapped her knuckles on the glass. He looked up, hastily jammed the paper into his shirt’s breast pocket.

  When the window whispered down, she said, “What the hell d’you think you’re doing??

??

  He put away his pen. “Making sure you don’t get hurt. This a helluva neighborhood.”

  “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

  “Listen, I know you’re on to something—something important Homeland Security doesn’t have a clue about. I gotta have the info.”

  She glared down at him. “What you have to do is leave. Now.”

  All at once his face turned into a granite mask. “I want what you know soon’s you know it.”

  Soraya felt the heat of combat in her cheeks. “Or what?”

  Without warning, he swung the door open, catching her in the stomach. Down she went to her knees, gasping.

  Slowly, Overton climbed out of the car and stood over her. “Don’t fuck with me, little lady. I’m older’n you. I don’t play by the book. I’ve forgotten more tricks than you’ll ever learn.”

  Soraya closed her eyes for a moment, to show him that she was trying to regain both her wind and her composure. Meanwhile her left hand had pulled a compact no-snag ASP pistol from its slim holster at the small of her back, aimed it at Overton. “This is loaded with nine-by-nineteen-millimeter Parabellum bullets,” she said. “At this range, one of them will most likely tear you in two.” She took two deep breaths. Her gun hand was steady. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”

  He backed up slowly and deliberately, sitting down behind the wheel without taking his eyes off her. He shook out a cigarette, stuck it between his bloodless lips, lit it with a languid motion, drew down on it.

  “Yes, ma’am.” There was nothing in his voice; all the venom was in his eyes. He slammed the door shut.

  He watched her regain her feet as the engine roared to life and he pulled out. Glancing in the rearview mirrors, he saw her aiming the ASP squarely at his rear window until the car disappeared into traffic.

  When he lost sight of her, he pulled out his cell phone, pressed a speed-dial key. The moment he heard Matthew Lerner’s voice, he said, “You were right, Mr. Lerner. Soraya Moore’s still nosing around, and to tell you the truth she’s just become a clear and present danger.”

  Kabur directed them to the church whose steeple had guided Bourne to the village. It was, like all the churches in the country, part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The religion was old, and with more than thirty-six million members, it was the world’s largest Oriental Orthodox church. In fact, it was the only pre-colonial Christian church in its part of Africa.

  There was a moment, in the watery light of the church, when Bourne thought Kabur had played him for a fool. That not only Zaim’s radiation-eaten son but also the nagus himself was in Fadi’s employ; that he had been led into a trap. He whipped out the Makarov. Then the shadows and patches of light resolved themselves and he saw a figure beckoning wordlessly to him.

  “It’s Father Mihret,” Zaim whispered. “I know him.”

  Zaim, though still recovering from his wound, had insisted on coming along. He was attached to Bourne now. They had saved each other’s lives.

  “My sons,” Father Mihret said softly, “I fear you’ve come too late.”

  “The pilot,” Bourne said. “Please take me to him.”

  As they hastily made their way through the church, Bourne said, “Is he still alive?”

  “Barely.” The priest was tall and thin as a post. He possessed the large eyes and emaciated look of an ascetic. “We’ve done everything we can for him.”

  “How did he come to you, Father?” Zaim asked.

  “He was found by herders on the outskirts of the village, within a clump of firs near the river. They came to me and I ordered him moved here on a litter, but I fear it did him little good.”

  “I have access to a warbird,” Bourne said. “I can airlift him out.”

  Father Mihret shook his head. “He has fractures of the neck and spinal cord. There is no way to successfully immobilize him. He would never survive another move.”

  The pilot, Jaime Cowell, was in Father Mihret’s own bed. Two women tended to him, one salving his flayed skin, the other squeezing water from a cloth into his half-open lips. A flicker appeared in Cowell’s eyes when Bourne came into his line of sight.

  Bourne briefly turned his back to him. “Can he talk?” he said to the priest.

  “Very little,” Father Mihret replied. “When he moves at all, the pain is excruciating.”

  Bourne stood over the bed so that his face was in Cowell’s direct line of sight. “I’ve come to take you home, Jaime. D’you understand me?”

  Cowell’s lips moved, a soft hiss emanating from between them.

  “Look, I’ll make this short,” Bourne said. “I need to find Martin Lindros. You two were the only ones to survive the attacks. Is Lindros alive?”

  Bourne had to bend down, his ear almost touching Cowell’s lips.

  “Yes. When I… last saw him.” Cowell’s voice was like sand slithering across a dune.

  Though his heart leapt, Bourne was appalled by the stench. The priest wasn’t wrong: Death was already in the room, stinking up the place.

  “Jaime, this is very important. Do you know where Lindros is?”

  Again, the terrible stench as Bourne leaned in.

  “Three klicks west by southwest… across the… river.” Cowell was sweating with the effort and the pain. “Camp… heavily defended.”

  Bourne was about to move away when Cowell’s rasp began again. His chest, rising and falling with unnatural rapidity, began to shudder, as his already overstressed muscles began to spasm. Cowell’s eyes closed, tears leaking out from under the lids.

  “Take it easy,” Bourne urged. “Rest now.”

  “No! Oh, God!”

  Cowell’s eyes flew open, and when he stared up into Bourne’s the darkness of the abyss could be seen moving closer.

  “This man… the leader…”

  “Fadi.” Bourne supplied his name.

  “He’s tortur… torturing Lindros.”

  Bourne’s stomach rolled up into a ball of ice. “Is Lindros holding out? Cowell! Cowell can you answer me?”

  “He’s beyond all questions now.” Father Mihret stepped in, put his hand on Cowell’s sweat-soaked forehead. “God has granted him blessed relief from his suffering.”

  They were moving him. Martin Lindros knew this because he could hear Abbud ibn Aziz barking out a multitude of orders, all in the service of getting them the hell out of the cave. There came the clangor of booted feet, the clash of metal weapons, the grunting of men lifting heavy loads. Then he heard the rattling engine of the truck as it backed up to the cave mouth.

  A moment later, Abbud ibn Aziz himself came to blindfold him.

  He squatted down beside Lindros. “Don’t worry,” he said.

  “I’m beyond worry,” Lindros said in a cracked voice he barely recognized as his own.

  Abbud ibn Aziz fingered the hood he was about to place over Lindros’s head. It was sewn of black cloth and had no eyeholes. “Whatever you know about the mission to murder Hamid ibn Ashef, now would be the time.”

  “I’ve told you repeatedly, I don’t know anything. You still don’t believe me.”

  “No.” Abbud ibn Aziz placed the hood over his head. “I don’t.”

  Then, quite unexpectedly, his hand briefly gripped Lindros’s shoulder.

  What is this, Lindros wondered, a sign of empathy? It was amusing in a way that was currently beyond him to appreciate. He could observe it as he observed everything these days, from behind a sheet of bulletproof glass of his own manufacture. That the pane was figurative made it no less effective. Ever since he’d returned from his private vault, Lindros had found himself in a semi-dissociative state, as if he couldn’t fully inhabit his own body. Things his body did—eating, sleeping, eliminating, walking for exercise, even talking occasionally with Abbud ibn Aziz—seemed to be happening to someone else. Lindros could scarcely believe that he had been captured. That the dissociation was an inevitable consequence of being locked up for so long in his ment

al vault—that the state would slowly dissolve and, finally, vanish—seemed at the moment to be a pure pipe dream. It seemed to him that he would live out the rest of his life in this limbo—alive, but not truly living.

  He was pulled roughly to his feet, feeling as if he were in a dream imagined over and over during his time out on the placid lake. Why was he being moved with this kind of haste? Had someone come after him? He doubted that it was CI; from snippets he’d overheard days ago, he knew that Dujja had destroyed the second helicopter of agents sent to find him. No. There was only one person who had the knowledge, tenacity, and sheer skill to get to the summit of Ras Dejen without being killed: Jason Bourne! Jason had come to find him and bring him home!

  Matthew Lerner sat in the rear of Golden Duck. Though it was in Chinatown, the small restaurant was featured in many D.C. guidebooks, which meant it was frequented by tourists and shunned by locals, including members of Lerner’s peculiar covert fraternity of spies and government agents. This, of course, suited him just fine. He had a good half a dozen meeting places he’d ferreted out around the district, randomizing his rendezvous with conduits and certain other individuals whose services he found useful.

  The place, dim and dingy, smelled of sesame oil, five-spice powder, and the bubbling contents of a deep fryer from which egg rolls and breaded chicken parts were periodically lifted.

  He was nursing a Tsingtao, drinking it out of the bottle because he found the oily smudges on the water glasses disturbing. Truth to tell, he’d much rather have been swigging Johnnie Walker Black, but not now. Not with this particular rendezvous.

  His cell phone buzzed and, opening it, he saw a text message: “OUT THE BACK ONTO 7 ST. FIVE MINUTES.”

  Deleting it at once, he pocketed the phone and returned to polishing off his Tsingtao. When he’d finished, he plunked some bills onto the table, got his coat, and walked to the men’s room. He was, of course, familiar with the restaurant’s layout, as he was with the sites of all his rendezvous. After urinating, he turned right out of the men’s room, went past a kitchen clouded with steam, alive with shouted Cantonese and the angry sizzle of huge iron woks over open flames.