Page 18 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  “That was my conclusion as well.”

  “And it’s none of this ‘dirty bomb’ crap that would impact a couple of square blocks. This is the real thing, power enough to devastate a major city, irradiate the surrounding areas. For the love of God, we’re talking millions of lives!”

  Lindros was right. In Djibouti, Bourne had called the Old Man while the doctor was assessing Martin’s condition, giving him an abbreviated briefing on Lindros, their current status, and, especially, what they’d discovered about Dujja’s threat and its capacity to carry it out. For now, however, all he could do was try to assess his friend’s mental condition. “Tell me about your time in captivity.”

  “There’s not much to tell, really. Most of the time I had a hood over my head. Believe it or not, I came to dread the times it would be removed, because that was when Fadi interrogated me.”

  Bourne knew he was now skating on thin ice. But he had to get at the truth, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Did he know you were CI?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “I told him I was NSA, and he believed me. He had no reason not to. One American spy agency is like another to these people.”

  “Did he want information on NSA personnel deployment or mission objectives?”

  Lindros shook his head. “As I said, what interested him was how I came to be following him and how much I knew.”

  Bourne hesitated fractionally. “Did he find that out?”

  “I know what you’re getting at, Jason. I had a strong conviction that if I broke, he’d kill me.”

  Bourne said nothing more for the moment. Lindros’s breathing was coming quick and fast, cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. The doctor had warned him that if he went too far, too fast with Lindros, a reaction might set in.

  “Should I call the doctor?”

  Lindros shook his head. “Give me a minute. I’ll be okay.”

  Bourne went back to the galley, made plates of food for them both. There were no attendants on board, just the doctor, a CI pilot, and an armed copilot up front. Returning to his seat, he handed a plate to his friend, sat down with the other. For some time, Bourne ate in silence. Presently, he could see that Lindros had calmed down enough to begin picking at his food.

  “Tell me what’s been happening while I’ve been gone.”

  “I wish I had some good news. But the fact is your people caught that Cape Town dealer who sold the TSGs to Dujja.”

  “Hiram Cevik, yes.”

  Bourne produced the PS3, brought up the photo of Cevik, showed it to Lindros.

  “This him?”

  “No,” Lindros said. “Why?”

  “This is the man picked up in Cape Town and brought to D.C. He escaped, but not before one of his people shot Tim Hytner to death.”

  “Dammit all. Hytner was a good man.” Lindros tapped the PS3 screen. “So who is this?”

  “I think it’s Fadi.”

  Lindros was incredulous. “We had him, and lost him?”

  “I’m afraid so. On the other hand, this is the first lead we have to what Fadi actually might look like.”

  “Let me see that.” Lindros stared hard at the photo. After a long time, he said, “Christ, that is Fadi!”

  “You’re sure?”

  Lindros nodded. “He was there when they took us. He’s got a load of makeup on here, but I recognize the shape of the face. And those eyes.” He nodded, handing back the PS3. “That’s Fadi, all right.”

  “Can you make a sketch of him for me?”

  Lindros nodded. Bourne rose, then came back a moment later with a pad and a fistful of pencils he’d gotten from the copilot.

  While Lindros went to work, Bourne spoke of something he had noticed in his friend. “Martin, you look like there’s something else you want to tell me.”

  Lindros looked up from the sketch. “It’s probably nothing, but…” He shook his head. “When I was alone with another of my interrogators—a man named Abbud ibn Aziz, who by the way is Fadi’s right hand—a name kept coming up. Hamid ibn Ashef.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “Really? I thought I saw his name in your file.”

  “If so, it must have been a mission set up by Alex Conklin. But if it involved me, I have no memory of it.”

  “I was just wondering why Abbud ibn Aziz wanted information on that particular mission. I guess now I’ll never know.” Lindros took a long drink of water. He was following the doctor’s orders to rest and rehydrate. “Jason, I may still be somewhat out of it, but I’m no longer in shock. I know the powers that be are going to run a complete battery of tests to determine my fitness.”

  “You’re going to return to duty, Martin.”

  “I hope you know you’re going to play a major role in that decision. After all, you know me best. CI will have to be guided by your opinion.”

  Bourne couldn’t help laughing. “Now, that will be a switch.”

  Lindros took a deep breath, let it out, along with a little whistle of pain. “Irrespective of all this, I want you to promise me something.”

  Bourne searched his shadowed face for any sign that he knew what the powers that be would really be looking for: whether he had been brainwashed, turned into a ticking time bomb, a human weapon to be used against CI. It had always been in the back of Bourne’s mind as he’d gone after his friend. What would be the worse horror, he’d wondered. To find his friend dead, or to discover that he’d been turned into the enemy?

  “Dujja’s rigid, almost businesslike, organization, its seemingly unending supply of modern armament, the fact that Fadi is obviously Western-educated—all these factors taken together make this cadre unlike any other terrorist network we’ve ever been up against,” Lindros continued. “The construction of a uranium enrichment plant is massively expensive. Who has that kind of money to throw around? My guess is a crime cartel. Drug money from crops in Afghanistan or Colombia. Turn off that spigot—the money men—and you cut off its ability to enrich uranium, to get more up-to-date weapons. There’s no surer way of sending it all the way back into the Iron Age.” His voice lowered. “In Botswana, I unearthed what I believe to be Dujja’s money trail, which runs back to Odessa. I have a name: Lemontov. Edor Vladovich Lemontov. The intel I gathered in Uganda is that Lemontov is based there.”

  His eyes gleamed, the old excitement returning. “Think of it, Jason! Up until now, the only realistic way to destroy an Islamic terrorist network was to try to infiltrate it. A tactic that is so difficult, it’s never succeeded. Now, for the first time, we have another option. A tangible means to dismantle the world’s most lethal terrorist network from the outside in.

  “I can take care of that end. But as for this money man, I don’t trust anyone else the way I trust you. I need you to go to Odessa as soon as possible, track down Lemontov, and terminate him.”

  The rambling fieldstone house had been built more than a hundred years before. Since then, it’d had ample time to settle into the rolling hills of Virginia. It had dormer windows, slate-tile roof, and a high stone wall around the property, with iron gates that opened electronically. It was said by neighbors that the estate was owned by an old recluse of a writer who, if anyone were to take the trouble to look at a copy of the deed housed in the municipal building fifty kilometers away, had bought the estate twenty-two years ago for the sum of $240,000 after the county had closed the insane asylum. This writer was something of a paranoid, it was said. Why else would his wall be electrified? Why else would the pair of lean and perpetually hungry Dobermans roam the grounds, sniffing and growling ominously?

  In fact, the estate was owned by CI. Veteran agents, those in the know, had given it the name of Bleak House, because it was here that CI enacted its formal debriefs. They made macabre jokes about it because its very existence filled them with anxiety. It was to here that Bourne and Lindros were driven, on a joint-cracking winter’s morning, upon their arrival at Dulles airport.  Place your head just there. That’s right.”

  The CI agent cupped his hand to the back of Martin Lindros’s head as, moments before, he had done with Jason Bourne.

  “Look straight ahead, please,” the agent continued, “and try not to blink.”

  “I’ve done this a thousand times before,” Lindros growled.

  The agent ignored him, switching on the retinal reader and watching the readout as it scanned the center of Lindros’s right eye. Having taken its picture, the reader automatically compared the retinal pattern with the one on file. The match was perfect.

  “Welcome home, Deputy Director.” The agent grinned, extending his hand. “You’re cleared to enter Bleak House. Second door on your left. Mr. Bourne, you’re the third door on the right.”

  He nodded them to the elevator that had been installed when CI bought the estate. Since it was controlled by him, the doors were open, the car waiting patiently for them. Inside the shining stainless-steel cab, there was no need for numbers or buttons to push. This elevator went only to the sub-basement, where the warren of rough concrete corridors, claustrophobic windowless rooms, and mysterious laboratories staffed by a veritable phalanx of medical and psychological experts awaited like a medieval chamber of horrors.

  Everybody in CI knew that being taken to Bleak House meant something had gone horribly wrong. It was the temporary home of defectors, double agents, incompetents, and traitors.

  After that, these people were never heard from again, their fate a source of endless grisly rumor within the agency.

  Bourne and Lindros reached the sub-basement and stepped out into the corridor, which smelled vaguely of cleaning fluid and acid. They stood facing each other for a moment. There was nothing more to say. They gripped each other’s hands like gladiators about to enter the bloody arena, and parted.

  In the room behind the third door on the right, Bourne sat on a ladder-backed metal chair bolted to the concrete floor. The long fluorescent tubes of an industrial overhead light, covered by a steel grille, buzzed like a horsefly against a windowpane. It revealed a metal table and another metal chair, both also bolted to the floor. There was a stainless-steel toilet in one corner, prison-style, and a tiny sink. The room was otherwise bare save for a mirror on one wall, through which he could be observed by whoever was assigned to his interrogation.

  For two hours he waited with only the company of the fluorescent tube’s angry buzzing for company. Then abruptly the door opened. An agent walked in, sat down on the other side of the table. He set out a small tape recorder, turned it on, opened a file on the tabletop, and began his questioning.

  “Tell me in as much detail as you remember what happened from the moment you arrived on the north face of Ras Dejen to the moment you took off with the subject on board.”

  While Bourne spoke, the interrogator never took his eyes off his face. He himself was a man of middle years, of medium height, with a high domed forehead and thin, receding hair. He had a receding chin but the eyes of a fox. He never once looked at Bourne directly, instead he studied him from the corners of his eyes, as if this might give him the advantage of insight, or at least intimidation.

  “What was the subject’s condition when you found him?”

  The interrogator was asking Bourne to repeat what he’d already said. This was standard operating procedure, a way to ferret out the lies from the truth. If a subject was lying, his story would change sooner or later. “He was bound and gagged. He appeared very thin—much as he does now—as if his captors had fed him minimally.”

  “I imagine he had great difficulty managing the ascent back to the helicopter.”

  “The beginning was the most difficult for him. I thought I might have to carry him. His muscles were cramped and his stamina was virtually nil. I fed him a couple of protein bars and that helped. Within an hour, he was walking more steadily.”

  “What was the first thing he said?” the interrogator said with a false mildness.

  Bourne knew that the more casually a question was asked, the more important it was to the interrogator. “‘I’ll do what I have to do.’”

  The interrogator shook his head. “I mean when he first saw you. When you removed the gag.”

  “I asked him if he was okay—”

  The interrogator regarded the ceiling as if he was bored. “And he said what, precisely?”

  Bourne remained stone-faced. “He nodded. He didn’t say a word.”

  The interrogator looked puzzled, a sure sign that he was trying to trip Bourne up. “Why not? You’d think after more than a week in captivity, he’d say something.”

  “It was insecure. The less we spoke at that moment, the better. He knew that.”

  Bourne was in the corners of the interrogator’s eyes again. “So his first words to you were…”

  “I told him we needed to climb the rock chimney in order to escape and he said ‘I’ll do what I have to do.’”

  The interrogator appeared unconvinced. “All right, passing over that. In your opinion, what was his mental state at that time?”

  “He seemed okay. Relieved. He wanted out of there.”

  “He wasn’t disoriented, didn’t exhibit any lapses of memory? He didn’t say anything odd, out of place?”

  “No, none of that.”

  “You seem very sure of yourself, Mr. Bourne. Don’t you yourself have a memory problem?”

  Bourne knew he was being baited, and he relaxed inside. Baiting was the method of last resort, when every other avenue to break a story apart had been exhausted. “Of events in the past. My memories of yesterday, last week, last month are crystal clear.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation the interrogator said, “Has the subject been brainwashed, has he been turned?”

  “The man across the hall is Martin Lindros as he’s always been,” Bourne replied. “On the plane ride home, we talked of things only he and I knew about.”

  “Please be more specific.”

  “He confirmed the identity of the terrorist Fadi. He made a sketch for me. A huge breakthrough for us. Before that, Fadi was just a cipher. Martin also gave me the name of Fadi’s right-hand man, Abbud ibn Aziz.”

  The interrogator asked him another dozen questions, many of which he’d asked before with different wording. Bourne patiently answered them all. Nothing was going to ruffle his calm.

  As abruptly as it had started, the session came to an end. Without either acknowledgment or explanation, the interrogator turned off the tape recorder, then took it and his notes with him out of the room.

  Another period of waiting ensued, interrupted only by another agent, younger, bringing in a tray of food. He left without saying a word.

  It was just after six in the evening, according to Bourne’s watch—an entire day spent in interrogation—when the door next opened.

  Bourne, who thought he was ready for anything, was very much surprised to see the DCI walk in. He stood, regarding Bourne for a long time. In his face, Bourne recognized the conflicting emotions that clogged the Old Man’s throat. It had cost him something to come in here at all, and now what he’d come to say stuck in his craw like a fish bone.

  At last he said, “You made good on your promise. You brought Martin home.”

  “Martin’s my friend. I wasn’t about to fail him.”

  “You know, Bourne, it’s no secret I wish I’d never met you.” The Old Man shook his head. “But really, you’re a fucking enigma.”

  “Even to myself.”

  The DCI blinked several times. Then he turned on his heel and strode out, leaving the door open. Bourne rose. He supposed he was free to leave, and so was Martin. That’s all that mattered. Martin had passed the exhausting battery of physical and psychological tests. They had both survived Bleak House.

  Matthew Lerner, sitting in the Typhon director’s chair, behind the Typhon director’s desk, knew something was amiss the moment he heard the applause. He turned away from the computer terminal, where he had be

en devising a new system of cataloging Typhon e-files.

  He rose, crossed the director’s office, and opened the door. There he was greeted by the sight of Martin Lindros being surrounded by the members of his Typhon cadre, all of whom were smiling, laughing, and pumping his hand enthusiastically when they weren’t egging him on with their applause.

  Lerner could scarcely believe his eyes. Here comes Caesar, he thought bitterly. And why didn’t the DCI see fit to tell me he’d returned? With a mixture of repulsion and envy, he watched the prodigal general making his slow, triumphal way toward him. Why are you here? Why aren’t you dead?

  With no small pain, he screwed a smile onto his face and held out his hand.

  “All hail the returning hero.”

  Lindros reflected back the smile in all its steel-clad irony. “Thanks for keeping my chair warm, Matthew.”

  He swept by Lerner and into his office. There he stood stock-still, taking inventory. “What, no new coat of paint?” As Lerner followed him in, he added: “A verbal debriefing will do, before you go upstairs.”

  Lerner did as he was asked while he went about gathering his personal items. When he was finished, Lindros said, “I’d appreciate getting the office back as I left it, Matthew.”

  Lerner glared at him for a microsecond, then carefully put back all the photos, prints, and memorabilia he had put away, hoping never to see again. As an accomplished commander, he knew when to leave the field of battle. It was with the certain knowledge that this was a war, and it had just begun.

  Three minutes after Lerner had left the Typhon offices, Lindros’s phone rang. It was the Old Man.

  “I bet it feels good to be sitting behind that desk.”