Page 30 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  He was considering methods for remedying his deteriorating situation when he saw someone slip out of a battered Skoda seven cars from the front of the queue. His curiosity piqued, Valery Petrovich walked forward along the fronts of the warehouses, keeping his eye on the figure. He had just made out that it was a man when the figure slipped into a refuse-strewn alley between two buildings. Glancing front and back, the officer realized that no one else had noticed the man.

  For half a second, he thought about using his walkie-talkie to alert his partner to the suspicious figure. That’s all the time it took for him to realize that this was his ticket to returning to his sergeant’s good graces. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip through his fingers by allowing someone else to capture what might very possibly be the fugitive they’d been sent to capture. He had no intention of becoming the next Mikhail Arkanovich, so, pistol drawn, licking his chops like a wolf about to rend its unsuspecting prey, he hurried eagerly on.

  Taking a quick visual survey behind the line of warehouses, Bourne had already determined the best route to work his way around the roadblock. Under normal circumstances, there would have been no problem. Trouble was, he now found himself in anything but normal circumstances. Certainly he’d been injured before in the field—many times, in fact. But rarely this severely. On the car ride out to the dog handler’s, he’d begun to feel feverish. Now he felt chills running through him. His forehead was hot, his mouth dry. He was in need not only of rest but also of more antibiotics—a full course—to fully pull himself out of the weakness inflicted by the knife wound.

  Rest was, of course, out of the question. Where he was going to get antibiotics was problematic. If he didn’t have an urgent reason to get out of Odessa immediately, he could have gone to the CI doctor. But that, too, was now out of the question.

  He was in the open area behind the warehouses. A wide paved road gave access to the row of loading docks. Here and there were scattered refrigerated trucks and semis, either backed up to the docks or pulled to the far side of the road, where they sat idle, waiting for their drivers to return.

  As he moved toward the area parallel to the roadblock on the other side of the buildings on his left, he passed a couple of forklifts, dodging several others loaded with large crates that scooted from one loading dock to another.

  He saw his pursuer—a policemen—as a reflection in a forklift. Without breaking stride, he clambered painfully onto a loading dock and passed between two stacks of boxes into the warehouse interior. All the men, he noticed, were wearing port ID tags.

  He found his way to the locker room. It was past the beginning of the shift, and the tiled room was deserted. He went along the lines of lockers, picking the locks at random. The third locker provided what he was looking for: a maintenance uniform. He donned it, not without a series of hot stitches of pain radiating out from his side. A thorough search turned up no ID tag. He knew how to take care of that. On the way out, he brushed against a man coming in, mumbling a hasty apology. As he hurried back onto the loading dock, he clipped on the tag he’d lifted.

  Checking the immediate environment, he could find no sign of his pursuer. He set out on foot, skirting the empty steel cabs of the trucks whose cargo was being unloaded onto the concrete docks, where each crate, barrel, or container was checked against a manifest or bill of lading.

  “Halt!” came a voice behind him. “Stop right there!” He saw the policeman behind the wheel of one of the empty forklifts. The policeman put the vehicle in gear and drove it straight at him.

  Though the forklift wasn’t fast, Bourne nevertheless found himself at a distinct disadvantage. Because of the path the forklift was taking, he was imprisoned within a relatively narrow space, bordered on one side by the parked trucks, on the other by a strip of bunkerlike raw concrete buildings that housed the offices of the warehouse companies.

  For the moment, the traffic was dense, and everyone was too busy at their jobs to notice the wayward forklift and its prey, but that might change at any moment.

  Bourne turned and ran. With every stride the forklift gained on him, not only because it was in high gear but also because Bourne was in crippling agony. He dodged the machine once, twice, the tips of its forks releasing a shower of sparks as they scraped along a concrete wall.

  He was near the end of the loading docks closest to the roadblock. There was an enormous semi backed into the last bay. Bourne’s only chance was to run directly at the side of the cab, ducking under it at the last minute. He would have made it, too, but at almost the last instant, the overworked muscles of his left leg buckled under the pain.

  He stumbled, slamming his side against the cab. A heartbeat later the ends of the forks punctured the painted steel on either side of Bourne, pinning him in place. He tried to duck down but he couldn’t; he was held fast on either side by the forks.

  He struggled to recover, to disengage himself from a pain so debilitating it made all thought difficult. Then the policeman crashed the gears, and the forklift ground forward. The tines buried themselves deeper into the side of the semi, thrusting him forward toward the truck.

  A moment more and he would be crushed between the forklift and the semi.

  Twenty-one

  BOURNE EXHALED and twisted his body. At the same time, he jammed his hands against the tops of the horizontal forks, levering his torso, then his legs up above the level of the tines. He spread his feet on the metal sill in front of the cab and levered himself onto the windshield.

  The policeman threw the forklift into reverse in an attempt to dislodge Bourne, but the forks had pierced into the core of the cab and now something there was holding them fast.

  Seeing his opening, Bourne swung around to the open side. The policeman drew his gun, aimed it at Bourne, but before he could pull the trigger Bourne kicked out, the toe of his shoe colliding with the side of the policeman’s face. The jawbone dislocated, cracking apart.

  Bourne grabbed the policeman’s pistol and drove another fist into the man’s solar plexus, doubling him over. He turned, jumped to the ground, the jarring force running right up into his left side like a spear thrust.

  Then Bourne was off and running, past the line of the roadblock into a small woods, then out again on the other side. By the time he reached the side of the road several thousand meters beyond the police presence, he was winded and spent. But there was the battered Skoda, its passenger door open, Soraya’s face, drawn and anxious, peering across the car’s interior, watching him all the way as he climbed aboard. He slammed the door shut, and the Skoda lurched forward as she put it in gear.

  “Are you all right?” she said, her eyes flicking from him to the road ahead. “What the hell happened?”

  “I had to go to Plan C,” Bourne said. “And then to Plan D.”

  “There were no Plans C and D.”

  Bourne put his head against the seat. “That’s what I mean.”

  Arriving at Ilyichevsk under gathering clouds, Lerner said, “Take me to the ferry slips. I want to check the first outgoing ferry, because that’s where he’s headed.”

  “I disagree.” Dr. Pavlyna drove the car through the byways of the port with the assurance of someone who’d done it many times before. “The facility maintains its own Polyclinic. Believe me when I tell you that by now Bourne is going to need what only the clinic has got.”

  Lerner, who’d never taken an order from a woman in his life, disliked the idea of taking Dr. Pavlyna’s suggestion. In fact, he disliked having her driving him around. But for the time being, it served its purpose. That didn’t mean her competence didn’t put him in a surly mood.

  Ilyichevsk was vast, a cityscape of low, flat, ugly buildings, vast warehouses and silos, cold storage facilities, container terminals, and monstrously tall TAKRAF cranes floating on barges. To the west, fishing trawlers lay at berth being off-loaded or refitted. The port, built in a kind of arc around a natural inlet to the Black Sea, comprised seven cargo-handling compl

exes. Six specialized in areas such as steel and pig iron, tropical oils, timber, vegetables and liquid oils, fertilizer. One was an immense grain silo reloader. The seventh was for ferries and ro-ro vessels. Ro-ro was short for “roll on–roll off,” meaning that the central space housed enormous containers from both rail lines and tractor-trailers that were driven onto the ferry and stacked in its bowels. Above this space was the area housing the passengers, captain, and much of the crew. The main drawback to the design was its inherent instability. With only a centimeter or two of water penetrating the cargo deck, the ferry would start to roll over and sink. Nevertheless, no other craft could serve its purpose as efficiently, so ro-ros continued to be used all over Asia and the Middle East.

  The Polyclinic lay more or less midway between Terminals Three and Six. It was in an unremarkable three-story building with strictly utilitarian lines. Dr. Pavlyna drew her car up to the side of the Polyclinic and switched off the engine.

  She turned to Lerner. “I’ll go in myself. That way, there won’t be any questions with security.”

  As she moved to open her door, Lerner grasped her arm. “I think it would be better if I went with you.”

  She glanced down at his hand for a moment before saying, “You’re making things difficult. Let me take the lead in this; I know the people here.”

  Lerner tightened his grip. His grin revealed a set of very large teeth. “If you know the people, Doctor, there won’t be any questions with security, will there?”

  She gave him a long appraising look, as if seeing him for the first time. “Is there a problem?”

  “Not from my end.”

  Dr. Pavlyna wrested her arm from his grasp. “Because if there is, we should settle it now. We’re in the field—”

  “I know precisely where we are, Doctor.”

  “—where misconceptions and misunderstandings can lead to fatal errors.”

  Lerner got out of the car and began walking toward the front door of the Polyclinic. A moment later, he heard Dr. Pavlyna’s boots crunch against the gravel before she caught up with him on the tarmac.

  “You may have been sent by the DCI, but I’m the COS here.”

  “For the time being,” he said blithely.

  “Is that a threat?” Dr. Pavlyna didn’t hesitate. Men of one sort or another had been trying to intimidate her ever since she was a little girl. She’d taken her early knocks before learning how to fight back with her arsenal of weapons. “You’re under my command. You understand that.”

  He paused for a moment in front of the door. “I understand that I have to deal with you while I’m here.”

  “Lerner, have you ever been married?”

  “Married, and divorced. Happily.”

  “Why am I not surprised.” As she tried to brush past him, he grabbed her again.

  Dr. Pavlyna said, “You don’t like women much, do you?”

  “Not the ones who think they’re men, I don’t.”

  Having made his point, he dropped his hand from her arm.

  She opened the door, but for the moment barred his entry with her body. “For God’s sake keep your mouth shut, otherwise you’ll compromise my security.” She stepped aside. “Even someone as crude as you can understand that.”

  Under the pretext of a mission briefing update, Karim al-Jamil wangled himself an invitation to breakfast with the Old Man. Not that he didn’t have an update, but the mission was bullshit, so anything he had to say about it was bullshit. On the other hand, it felt fine to feed the DCI bullshit for breakfast. Anyway, he had his own intel update to digest. The memories Dr. Veintrop implanted had led Bourne to the ambush point. Somehow the man had recovered enough to shoot four men to death and escape Fadi. But not before Fadi had knifed him in the side. Was Bourne dead or alive? If Karim al-Jamil were allowed to bet, he’d put his money on alive.

  But now that he had reached the top floor of CI headquarters, he forced his mind back into its role of Martin Lindros.

  Even during a crisis, the Old Man took his meals where he always did.

  “Being chained to the same desk, staring at the same monitor day in, day out, is enough to drive a man mad,” he said as Karim al-Jamil sat down opposite him. The floor was divided in two. The west wing was devoted to a world-class gym and Olympic-size swimming pool. The walled-off east wing, where they were now, housed quarters off limits to everyone except the Old Man.

  This was the room to which the seven heads of directorates had from time to time been invited. It had the look and feel of a greenhouse, with a thick terra-cotta tile floor and a high humidity level, the better to accommodate a wide variety of tropical greenery and orchids. Who tended them was the stuff of much speculation and fanciful urban legends. The bottom line was that no one knew, just as no one knew who—if anyone—occupied the east wing’s ten or twelve securely locked off-limits offices.

  This was, of course, Karim al-Jamil’s first time in the Gerbil Circuit, as it was referred to internally. Why? Because the DCI kept three gerbils in side-by-side cages. In each cage, one gerbil was confined to a wheel on which it ran endlessly. Much like the agents of CI.

  Those few directorate heads who spoke of their breakfasts with the Old Man claimed he found watching the gerbils at their labor relaxing—like staring at fish in a tank. Speculation among the agents, however, was that the DCI perversely enjoyed being reminded that, like the ancient Greek Sisyphus, CI’s task was without either praise or end.

  “On the other hand,” the Old Man was saying now, “the job itself can drive a man mad.”

  The table was set with a starched white cloth, two bone-china settings, a basket of croissants and muffins, and two carafes, one of strong, freshly brewed coffee, the other of Earl Grey tea, the Old Man’s favorite.

  Karim al-Jamil helped himself to coffee, which he sipped black. The DCI liked his tea milky and sweet. There was no sign of a waiter, but a metal cart stood tableside, keeping its contents warm for the diners.

  Digging out his papers, Karim al-Jamil said, “Should I start the briefing now or wait for Lerner?”

  “Lerner won’t be joining us,” the DCI said enigmatically.

  Karim al-Jamil began. “The Skorpion units are three-quarters of the way to their destination in the Shabwah region of South Yemen. The marines have been mobilized out of Djibouti.” He glanced at his watch. “As of twenty minutes ago, they were on the ground in Shabwah, awaiting orders from our Skorpion commanders.”

  “Excellent.” The DCI refilled his teacup, stirred in cream and sugar. “What progress on pinning down the specific location of the transmissions?”

  “I put two separate Typhon teams onto parsing different packets of data. Right now we’re reasonably certain the Dujja facility is somewhere within the eighty-kilometer target radius.”

  The DCI was staring into the cages at the busy gerbils. “Can’t we pin it down more accurately?”

  “The chief problem is the mountains. They tend to distort and reflect the signals. But we’re working on it.”

  The Old Man nodded absently.

  “Sir, if I might ask, what’s on your mind?”

  For a moment it appeared as if the older man hadn’t heard. Then the DCI’s head swung around, his canny eyes engaging those of Karim al-Jamil. “I don’t know, but I feel as if I’m missing something… something important.”

  Karim al-Jamil kept his breathing even, arranged his expression into one of mild concern. “Is there anything I can help you with, sir? Perhaps it’s Lerner—”

  “Why d’you mention him in particular?” the DCI said a trifle too sharply.

  “We’ve never spoken about his taking over my position in Typhon.”

  “You were gone; Typhon was leaderless.”

  “And you put an outsider into the breach?”

  The DCI set down his cup with an ungainly clatter. “Are you second-guessing my judgment, Martin?”

  “Of course not.” Be careful, Karim al-Jamil thought. “But it was damn strange to

see him in my chair when I got back.”

  The Old Man frowned. “Yes, I can see that.”

  “And now in the middle of this ultimate crisis, he’s nowhere to be found.”

  “Get us our breakfast, would you, Martin,” the DCI said. “I’m hungry.”

  Karim al-Jamil opened the food cart, taking out two plates of fried eggs and bacon. It was all he could do not to gag. He’d never gotten used to pork products or, for that matter, eggs fried in butter. As he set a plate down in front of the DCI, he said, “If there’s still a bit of distrust after my ordeal, I certainly understand.”

  “It’s not that,” the Old Man said, again a bit too sharply.

  Karim al-Jamil set his own plate down. “Then what is it? I’d appreciate knowing. These mysterious incidents with Matthew Lerner make me feel as if I’ve been cut out of the loop.”

  “Seeing how much it means to you, Martin, I’ll make you a proposition.”

  The Old Man paused to chew a mouthful of bacon and eggs, swallow, and wipe his glistening lips in a fair imitation of gentlemanly fashion.

  Karim al-Jamil almost felt sorry for the real Martin Lindros, who’d had to put up with this insulting behavior. And they call us barbarians.

  “I know you have a great deal on your plate at the moment,” the DCI finally continued. “But if you could find your way to make some discreet inquiries for me—”

  “Who or what?”

  The DCI sliced into his eggs and neatly piled a third of a strip of bacon on top. “It has lately come to my attention through certain back channels that I have an enemy inside the Beltway.”

  “After all these years,” Karim al-Jamil observed, “there has to be a list of some size.”

  “Of course there is. But this one’s special. I ought to warn you to be exceedingly careful; he’s as powerful as they come.”