Page 33 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  So there was a significant personal element to Fadi’s plan. Because Fadi had come after him, leading him carefully, craftily into the web of a conspiracy of unprecedented proportions. It was he who had come after the man posing as Lindros; he who had vouched for the impostor at Bleak House. That, too, was part of the plan. Fadi had used him to infiltrate CI on the highest level.

  No longer able to lie still, Bourne levered himself off the bed, not without some pain and stiffness. He stretched as much as he could, then padded into the bathroom: a sheet-metal shower, tiny metal sink, porcelain toilet, hexagonal mirror. On a rack were a pair of thin, almost threadbare towels, two large oblong cakes of soap, probably mostly lye.

  Reaching up, he turned on the shower, waited for the spray of water to run hot, stepped in.

  The afternoon, waning, had turned gray, the sun having lowered beneath dark clouds holding what would soon be a deluge. With the premature darkness a humid wind had sprung up from the southwest, bringing with it imagined hints of the pungent scents of sumac and oregano from the Turkish shore.

  Matthew Lerner, standing amidships at the Itkursk’s starboard rail, was smoking a cigarette when he saw Soraya Moore emerge from one of the two VIP staterooms on the flagship deck.

  He watched her moving away from the stateroom, down a metal stairway to one of the lower decks. He felt the impulse to go after her, to bury the ice pick he carried into the nape of her neck. That would have made him personally happy, but professionally it was suicide—just as it would be to use his gun in the enclosed environment of the ship. He was after Bourne. Killing Soraya Moore would complicate a situation that had already jumped the tracks. He was having to improvise, not the best of scenarios, though in the field improvisation was almost inevitable.

  Swiveling adroitly, he faced the rolling waves as she came to the midway landing, for a moment facing in his direction. He pulled on the harsh Turkish cigarette then spun the butt over the side.

  He turned back. Soraya Moore had disappeared. There were no colors here. The sea was gunmetal gray, the ship itself painted black and white. Moving quickly across the deck, he climbed the staircase to the flagship deck and the door to the VIP stateroom.

  Bourne, careful of his wound, soaped up. Aches and muscle tightness sluiced away, along with the layers of sweat and grime. He wished he could stay under the hot water, but this was a working ship, not a luxury liner. The cold water came too quickly, and then the spray stopped altogether, with his skin still partially soap-slicked.

  At almost the same moment he saw a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he went into a crouch. His reflexes and the slickness of his skin saved him from having the ice pick wielded by Lerner puncture his neck. As it was, he lurched hard against the back wall of the shower as Lerner rushed him.

  Using the heavily callused edge of his hand, Lerner delivered two quick blows to Bourne’s midsection. Designed to incapacitate him so that Lerner could strike again with the ice pick, they landed hard, but not hard enough. Bourne countered a third blow, using the added leverage of the stall back to slam the heel of his left foot into Lerner’s chest just as Lerner was stepping into the shower. Instead of hemming Bourne in, Lerner shot backward, skidding across the tile of the bathroom floor.

  Bourne was out of the stall in an instant. He grabbed a new bar of soap, placed it squarely in the center of the towel. Holding the towel at either end, he spun it around, securely embedding the cake. With the two ends of the towel in his right hand, he swung it back and forth. He blocked a vicious edge-hand strike with his left forearm, lifting Lerner’s right arm up and away, creating an opening. He lashed his homemade weapon into Lerner’s midsection.

  The towel-wrapped bar of soap delivered a surprisingly wicked blow for which Lerner was unprepared. He staggered backward into the stateroom. Nevertheless, with his body in peak condition, it slowed him only momentarily. Set back on his heels, he waited for Bourne’s attempt to maneuver inside his defense. Instead Bourne whipped his weapon in low, forcing Lerner to take a swipe at it with the ice pick.

  At once Bourne stamped down with his left foot on Lerner’s right wrist, trapping it against the stateroom carpet. But Bourne was barefoot; moreover, his foot was still wet and somewhat slick, and Lerner was able to wrench his wrist free. Lerner slashed upward with the ice pick, barely missed impaling Bourne’s foot. He feinted right, drove his right knee into the left side of Bourne’s rib cage.

  The pain reverberated through Bourne, his teeth bared in a grimace. The iron-hard knuckles of Lerner’s fist struck him on the opposite shoulder. He sagged and, as he did so, Lerner hooked his heel behind Bourne’s ankle, then jerked him off his feet.

  He fell on Bourne, who struck upward. Blood spattered them both as Bourne landed a direct hit on Lerner’s nose, breaking it. As Lerner wiped the blood out of his eyes, Bourne upended him, jamming his fingertips into the spot just at the bottom of Lerner’s rib cage. Lerner grunted in surprise and pain as he felt two of his ribs give.

  He roared, letting go with such a flurry of powerful blows that even with both hands free Bourne couldn’t protect himself from all of them. Only a third got through his defenses, but those were enough to seriously weaken his already compromised stamina.

  Without knowing how it happened, he found Lerner’s ham-like hand around his throat. Pinned to the floor, he saw the point of the ice pick sweep down toward his right eye.

  Only one chance now. He ceded all conscious control to the killer instinct of the Bourne identity. No thought, no fear. He slammed the palms of his hands against Lerner’s ears. The twin blows not only disoriented Lerner but also created a semiairtight seal, so that when Bourne swung his hands apart the resulting pressure ruptured Lerner’s eardrums.

  The ice pick stopped in midstrike, trembling in Lerner’s suddenly palsied hand. Bourne swept it aside, grabbed Lerner by the front of his shirt, jerked him down as he brought his head up. The bone of his forehead impacted Lerner’s face just where the bridge of his nose met his forehead.

  Lerner reared back, his eyes rolling up. Still he grasped the ice pick. Half unconscious, his superbly developed survival instinct kicked in. His right hand swept down, passing through the skin on the outside of Bourne’s right arm as Bourne twisted away.

  Then Bourne delivered a two-handed blow to the carotid artery in the right side of Lerner’s neck. Lerner, on his knees, fell back, swaying. Forming his fingers into a tight wedge, Bourne drove his fingertips into the soft spot beneath Lerner’s jaw. He felt the shredding of skin, muscle, viscera.

  The stateroom turned red.

  Bourne felt a sudden blackness imposing itself on his vision. All at once, his strength deserted him, ebbing like the tide. He shivered, toppled over, unconscious.

  Twenty-three

  MUTA IBN AZIZ, his fingers gripping Katya Veintrop’s shapely upper arm, rode the stainless-steel elevator down to Dujja’s Miran Shah nuclear facility.

  “Will I see my husband now?” Katya asked.

  “You will,” Muta ibn Aziz said, “but the reunion won’t make either of you happy, this I promise.”

  The elevator door slid open. Katya shuddered as they stepped out.

  “I feel like I’m in the bowels of hell,” she said, looking around at the bare concrete corridors.

  The infernal lighting did nothing to disfigure her beauty, which Muta ibn Aziz, like any good Arab, had done his best to cover with the utmost modesty. She was tall, slender, full-breasted, blond, light-eyed. Her skin, free of blemishes, seemed to glow, as if she’d recently buffed it. A small constellation of freckles rode the bridge of her nose. None of this mattered to Muta ibn Aziz, who ignored her with an absoluteness born and bred in the desert.

  During the dusty, monotonous eight-hour trip by Land Rover to Miran Shah, he had turned his mind to other matters. He had been to this spot once before, three years ago. He had come with his brother Abbud ibn Aziz; with them was the brilliant and reluctant Dr. Costin Veintrop. They had

been sent by Fadi to escort Veintrop from his laboratory in Bucharest to Miran Shah because the good doctor appeared incapable of making the trip on his own.

  Veintrop had been in a depressed and bitter mood, having been summarily severed from Integrated Vertical Technologies for crimes he claimed he’d never committed. He was right, but that was beside the point. The charges themselves had been enough to blackball him from any legitimate corporation, university, or grant program to which he applied.

  Along had come Fadi with his seductive offer. He hadn’t bothered to sugarcoat the goal of what he was proposing; what would be the point? The doctor would realize it soon enough. Veintrop was, naturally, dazzled by the money. But as it happened, he possessed scruples as well as brilliance. So Fadi had abandoned the carrot for the stick. This particular stick being Katya. Fadi had learned quickly enough that Veintrop would do virtually anything to keep Katya safe.

  “Your wife is safe with me, Doctor,” Fadi had said when Muta ibn Aziz and his brother had appeared at Miran Shah with Veintrop in tow. “Safer than she’d be anywhere else on the planet.” And to prove it, he’d shown Veintrop a video of Katya made just days before. Katya weeping, imploring her husband to come for her. Veintrop, too, had wept. Then, wiping his eyes, he had accepted Fadi’s offer. But in his eyes they all recognized the shadow of trouble.

  After Dr. Senarz had taken Veintrop away to begin his work at the Miran Shah labs, Fadi had turned to Muta ibn Aziz and Abbud ibn Aziz. “Will he do what we want? What is your opinion?”

  The two brothers spoke up at once, agreeing. “He’ll do everything asked of him as long as we beat him with the stick.”

  But it was the last thing they agreed on during that four-day sojourn in the concrete city deep below the wild, bare-knuckled mountains that formed the border between western Pakistan and Afghanistan. A man could get killed in those mountain passes—many men, in fact, no matter how well trained, how heavily armed. Miran Shah was the lethal badlands into which no representative of the Pakistani government or army dared venture. Taliban, al-Qaeda, World Jihad, Muslim fundamentalists of every stripe and flavor—Miran Shah was crawling with terrorists, many of whom were hostile to one another, for it was one of the more successful American lies that all terrorist groups were coordinated and controlled by one or two men, or even a handful. This was ludicrous: There were so many ancient enmities among sects, so many different objectives that interfered with one another. Still, the myth remained. Fadi, schooled in the West, master of the principles of mass communication, used the American lie against them, to build Dujja’s reputation, along with his own.

  As Muta ibn Aziz marched Katya along the corridors for her interview with Fadi and with her husband, he could not help but reflect on the fundamental splinter that had driven him and his brother apart. They had disagreed on it three years ago, and time had only hardened their respective positions. The splinter had a name: Sarah ibn Ashef, Fadi and Karim al-Jamil’s only sister. Her murder had changed all their lives, spawning secrets, lies, and enmity where none had existed before. Her death had destroyed two families, in ways both obvious and obscure. After that night in Odessa when her arms had flung out and she had pitched to the cobbles of the square, Muta ibn Aziz and his brother were finished. Outwardly they acted as if nothing had happened, but inside their thoughts never again ran down parallel tracks. They were lost to each other.

  Turning a corner, Muta ibn Aziz saw his brother step out of an open doorway, beckon to him. Muta hated when he did that. It was the gesture of a professor to a pupil, one who was due for a reprimand.

  “Ah, you’re here,” Abbud ibn Aziz said, as if his brother had taken a wrong turn and was now late.

  Muta ibn Aziz contrived to ignore Abbud ibn Aziz, brushing past him as he manhandled Katya over the threshold.

  The room was spacious, though by necessity low-ceilinged. It was furnished in strictly utilitarian fashion: six chairs made of molded plastic, a zinc-topped table, cabinets along the left-hand wall, with a sink and a single electric burner.

  Fadi was standing, facing them. His hands were on the shoulders of Dr. Veintrop, who was sitting, clearly not of his own volition, on one of the chairs.

  “Katya!” he cried when he saw her. His face lit up, but the light in his eyes was quickly extinguished as he tried, and failed, to go to her.

  Fadi, exerting the requisite pressure on Veintrop to keep him from moving, nodded to Muta ibn Aziz, who released the young woman. With an inarticulate cry, she ran to her husband, knelt in front of him.

  Veintrop caressed her hair, her face, his fingers moving over every contour as if he needed to reassure himself that she wasn’t a mirage or a doppelgänger. He’d seen what Dr. Andursky had done with Karim al-Jamil’s face. What would prevent him from doing the same with some other Russian woman, turning her into a Katya who would lie to him, do their bidding?

  Ever since Fadi had “recruited” him, his paranoia threshold was exceedingly low. Everything revolved around the plot to enslave him. In this, he wasn’t far wrong.

  “Now that you’ve been reunited, more or less,” Fadi said to Dr. Veintrop, “I’d like you to stop procrastinating. We have a specific timetable, and your foot-dragging is doing us no good.”

  “I’m not procrastinating,” Veintrop said. “The microcircuits—” He broke off, wincing, as Fadi applied more pressure to his shoulders.

  Fadi nodded to Abbud ibn Aziz, who stepped out of the room. When he returned, it was with Dr. Senarz, the nuclear physicist.

  “Dr. Senarz,” Fadi said, “please tell me why the nuclear device I ordered you to construct is not yet complete.”

  Dr. Senarz stared directly at Veintrop. He had trained under the notorious Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. “My work is complete,” he said. “The uranium dioxide powder you delivered to me has been converted to HEU, the metal form needed for the warhead. In other words, we have the fissionable material. The casing is also complete. We are now only waiting on Dr. Veintrop. His work is crucial, as you know. Without it, you won’t have the device you requested.”

  “So Costin, here we come to the crux of the matter at hand.” Fadi’s voice was calm, soft, neutral. “With your help my plan succeeds, without your help my plan is doomed. An equation as simple as it is elegant, to put it in scientific terms. Why aren’t you helping me?”

  “The process is more difficult than I had anticipated.” Veintrop could not keep his eyes off his wife.

  Fadi said, “Dr. Senarz?”

  “Dr. Veintrop’s miniaturization work has been complete for days now.”

  “What does he know of miniaturization?” Veintrop said sharply. “It simply isn’t true.”

  “I don’t want opinions, Dr. Senarz,” Fadi said with equal sharpness.

  When Senarz produced the small notebook with a dark red leather cover, Veintrop let out an involuntary moan. Katya, alarmed, gripped him tighter.

  Dr. Senarz held out the notebook. “Here we have Dr. Veintrop’s private notes.”

  “You have no right!” Veintrop shouted.

  “Ah, but he has every right.” Fadi accepted the notebook from Dr. Senarz. “You belong to me, Veintrop. Everything you do, everything you think, write, or dream of is mine.”

  Katya groaned. “Costin, what did you do?”

  “I sold my soul to the devil,” Veintrop muttered.

  Abbud ibn Aziz must have received a silent signal from Fadi, because he tapped Dr. Senarz on the shoulder and led him out of the room. The sound of the door closing behind them made Veintrop jump.

  “All right,” Fadi said in his gentlest voice.

  At once, Muta ibn Aziz grabbed Katya’s clothes at the nape of her neck and at her waist, wrenching her away from her husband. At the same time, Fadi resumed his two-handed grip on the doctor, slamming him back down onto the chair, from which he struggled to rise.

  “I won’t ask you again,” Fadi said in that same gentle tone, a father to a beloved child who has misbehav

ed.

  Muta ibn Aziz struck Katya a tremendous blow on the back of her head.

  “No!” Veintrop screamed as she sprawled face-first on the floor.

  No one paid him the slightest attention. Muta ibn Aziz hauled her up to a sitting position, came around, punched her so hard he broke her perfect nose. Blood gushed forth, spattering them both.

  “No!” Veintrop screamed.

  Gripping the back of her blond hair, Muta ibn Aziz drove his knuckles into Katya’s beautiful left cheek. Tears rolled down Katya’s bloated face as she sobbed.

  “Stop!” Veintrop shouted. “For the love of God, stop! I beg you!”

  Muta ibn Aziz drew back his bloody fist.

  “Don’t make me ask you again,” Fadi said in the doctor’s ear. “Don’t make me distrust you, Costin.”

  “No, all right.” Veintrop was himself sobbing. His heart was breaking into ten thousand pieces he would never be able to fit back together. “I’ll do what you want. I’ll have the miniaturization finished in two days.”

  “Two days, Costin.” Fadi grabbed his hair, jerked his head back so that his eyes looked up directly into his captor’s. “Not a moment more. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Otherwise, what will be done to Katya not even Dr. Andursky will be able to fix.”

  Muta ibn Aziz found his brother in Dr. Andursky’s operating theater. It was here that Karim al-Jamil had been given Martin Lindros’s face. It was here that Karim al-Jamil had been given a new iris, a new pupil, and, most important, a retina that would prove to CI’s scanners that Karim al-Jamil was Lindros.

  To Muta ibn Aziz’s relief, the theater was currently empty save for his brother.

  “Now surely we must tell Fadi the truth.” Muta ibn Aziz’s voice was low, urgent.

  Abbud ibn Aziz, staring at the battery of gleaming equipment, said, “Don’t you think of anything else? This is precisely what you said to me three years ago.”

  “Circumstances have changed, radically. It’s our duty to tell him.”