Page 35 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  Bourne nodded. “Fadi will confirm that it’s at the bottom of the Black Sea.”

  Soraya laughed. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Down the block from the Kaktüs was an Internet café. Soraya paid for their time while Bourne took a seat in front of a terminal in the back. He was already looking up Dr. Allen Sunderland when Soraya dragged over a chair. It seemed Sunderland had been the recipient of a number of awards and books. One of the sites Bourne pulled up contained a photo of the eminent memory specialist.

  “This isn’t the man who treated me,” Bourne said, staring at the photo. “Fadi used a substitute. A doctor he had bought or coerced to screw with the synapses of my brain, introduced neurotransmitters. They suppressed certain memories, but they also created false ones. Memories meant to help me accept Martin’s impostor, memories meant to lead me to my death.”

  “It’s horrible, Jason. Like someone has crawled inside your head.” Soraya put a hand on his shoulder. “How do you fight something like that?”

  “The fact is I can’t. Not unless I find the man who did this to me.”

  His mind went back to his conversation with the false Sunderland. The photo on the desk of the beautiful blonde Sunderland had called Katya. Was that part of the cover? Bourne opened his mind, listened to the tone of Sunderland’s voice. No, he was being sincere about the woman. She, at least, was real to the man who had passed himself off as Allen Sunderland.

  And then there was the doctor’s accent. Bourne remembered he’d pinned it as Romanian. So this much was legitimate: The man was a doctor—a specialist in memory reconstruction; he was Romanian; he was married to a woman named Katya. Katya, who was so relaxed in front of a camera that she might be a model or an ex-model. These bits and pieces didn’t amount to much, he thought, but a little knowledge was better than none at all.

  “Now let’s go back to our beginning.” His fingers flew over the keyboard. A moment later, he brought up information on Abu Sarif Hamid ibn Ashef al-Wahhib, founder of Integrated Vertical Technologies. “He was married thirty-three years ago to Holly Cargill, youngest daughter of Simon and Jacqui Cargill of Cargill and Denison, top-tier solicitors. The Cargills are an important part of London society. They claim to trace their lineage back to the time of Henry the Eighth.” His fingers continued their dance; the screen continued to spew out information. “Holly gave Hamid ibn Ashef three children. The first was Abu Ghazi Nadir al-Jamuh bin Hamid bin Ashef al Wahhib. Then his younger brother, Karim al-Jamil ibn Hamid bin Ashef al Wahhib—who, by the way, assumed the presidency of IVT the same year you and I were first in Odessa.”

  “Two weeks after you shot Hamid ibn Ashef,” Soraya said from over his shoulder. “What about the third child?”

  “I’m coming to that.” Bourne scrolled down the page. “Here we go. The youngest sibling is a daughter.” He stopped, his heart pounding in his throat. He said her name in a strangled voice. “Sarah ibn Ashef. Deceased.”

  “Our Sarah,” Soraya breathed in his ear.

  “It would seem so.” All at once, everything fell into place. “My God, Fadi is one of Hamid ibn Ashef’s sons.”

  Soraya looked stunned. “The elder, I’d surmise, since Karim assumed the presidency of IVT.”

  Bourne recalled his violent encounter with Fadi in the Black Sea surf. “I’ve waited a long time for this moment,” Fadi had said. “A long time to look you in the face again. A long time to exact my revenge.” When Bourne had asked him what he meant, Fadi had snarled, “You couldn’t have forgotten—not that.” He could only have been talking about one thing.

  “I killed their sister,” Bourne said, sitting back. “That’s why they wove me into their plan for destruction.”

  “We’re still no closer to finding out the identity of the man impersonating Martin Lindros,” Soraya said.

  “Or to whether they’ve kept Martin alive.” Bourne returned his attention to the computer terminal. “But maybe we can find out something about the other impostor.” Bourne had brought up the International Vertical Technologies Web site. On it was listed the conglomerate’s personnel, including its R&D staff, far-flung over a dozen countries.

  “If you’re searching for the man who impersonated Dr. Sunderland, it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “Not necessarily,” Bourne said. “Don’t forget, this man was a specialist.”

  “In memory restoration.”

  “That’s right.” Then Bourne remembered another part of his conversation with Sunderland. “Also miniaturization.”

  There were ten doctors in fields that were related or seemed likely. Bourne looked them up on the Net, one by one. None was the man who had performed the procedure on him.

  “Now what?” Soraya said.

  He quit the IVT site and switched to historical news listings for the conglomerate. Fifteen minutes of wading through articles on announcements of mergers, spin-offs, quarterly P&L reports, personnel hirings and firings finally led him to an item on Dr. Costin Veintrop, a specialist in biopharmaceutical nanoscience, scanning force microscopy, and molecular medicine.

  “It seems that Dr. Veintrop was summarily sacked from IVT for alleged intellectual property theft.”

  “Wouldn’t that strike him off the list?” Soraya said.

  “Just the opposite. Consider. A public sacking like that got Veintrop blackballed from every legitimate laboratory job, every university professorship. He went from the top of the heap to oblivion.”

  “Just the kind of situation Fadi’s brother could fabricate. Then it was work for Fadi or nothing.”

  Bourne nodded. “It’s a theory that bears checking out.” He typed in Dr. Costin Veintrop’s name, and out popped a curriculum vitae. All very interesting, but conclusive it was not. The photo link was, however. It showed the doctor posing at an awards ceremony. By his side was his trophy wife: the tall beautiful blonde whose photo he’d seen at Sunderland’s office. She was a former Perfect Ten model. Her name was Katya Stepanova Vdova.

  Marlin Dorph, CI field commander in charge of Skorpion units Five and Six, had been given a legitimate military rank of captain, which held him in good stead when, just before dawn, he and his team had rendezvoused with the marine detachment just outside the town of al-Ghaydah, in the Shabwah region of South Yemen.

  Dorph was the man for the job. He knew the Shabwah like the back of his hand. Its bloody history was tattooed into his flesh both by numerous victories and by defeats. Despite the assurances of Yemen’s government, Shabwah was still infested with an unsavory stew of Islamic terrorist militant groups. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Cuba had developed a network of training facilities tucked away in this inhospitable mountainous region. During that time, al-Ghaydah staffed by Cuban terrorist instructors, had become notorious for training and arming the People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman. In a nearby town, East Germans were busy preparing key members of the Saudi Communist Party and the Bahrain Liberation Front for destabilizing activities, including the manipulation of the mass media for the purpose of spreading the groups’ ideologies into every corner of their respective countries, thus undermining the spiritual lives of their peoples. Though the Soviets and their satellites left South Yemen in 1987, the terrorist cells did not, finding renewed vigor in the leadership of the venomous al-Qaeda.

  “Anything yet?”

  Dorph turned to find Captain Lowrie, commander of the marine forces who would be accompanying Skorpions Five and Six to the Dujja nuclear facility. Lowrie was tall, fair-haired, big as a bear, and twice as nasty looking.

  Dorph, who had seen his kind perform heroics and die in battle, hefted his Thuraya satellite phone. “Waiting for confirmation now.”

  They had rendezvoused on a sun-blasted plateau east of al-Ghaydah. The town shimmered in the dawn light, scoured by the restless wind, surrounded by mountains and desert. High clouds, shredded by winds aloft, streamed across the deep blue bowl of the sky. The mud-plastered

buildings, ten and twelve stories high, were boxlike with oblong windows that lent the facades the appearance of ancient temples. Time seemed to have stopped here, as if history had never progressed.

  On the plateau, the two military groups were silent, tense, spring-loaded, ready for the deployment they knew was imminent. They understood what was at stake; every man there was ready to lay down his life to ensure the safety of his country.

  While they waited, Dorph pulled out his GPS, showing his marine counterpart the tentative target site. It was less than a hundred kilometers south-southwest of their present position.

  The Thuraya buzzed. Dorph put it to his ear and listened while the man he believed to be Martin Lindros confirmed the coordinates he had marked out on his GPS.

  “Yessir,” he said softly into the Thuraya’s mouthpiece. “ETA twenty minutes. You can count on us, sir.”

  Breaking the connection, he nodded to Lowrie. Together they gave orders to their men, who silently climbed into the four Chinook helicopters. A moment later the rotors swung into motion, revolving faster and faster. The Chinook war machines took off two at a time, lifting massive clouds of dirt and sand that whirled upward in a fine mist, partially obscuring the aircraft until they reached altitude. Then they tipped forward slightly and shot ahead on a south by southwest course.

  The War Room, forty-five meters beneath the ground floor of the White House, was a hive of activity. The flat-panel plasma screens showed satellite photos of South Yemen in differing degrees of detail, from an overview to specific topographic landmarks, details of the terrain around al-Ghaydah. Others presented 3-D-rendered displays of the target area and the progress of the four Chinook helicopters.

  Those present were more or less the same contingent that had convened for the Old Man’s skewering: the president; Luther LaValle, the Pentagon intelligence czar, plus two lower-ranking generals; Defense Secretary Halliday; the national security adviser; and Gundarsson from the IAEA. The only missing member was Jon Mueller.

  “Ten minutes to contact,” the Old Man said. He had a headphone on, patched in to Commander Dorph’s scrambled communication net.

  “Remind me again what weaponry the strike force is carrying,” Secretary Halliday drawled from his seat on the president’s left.

  “These Chinooks are specially designed for us by McDonnell Douglas,” the Old Man said evenly. “In fact, they have more in common with the Apache attack helis McD makes than regulation Chinooks. Like the Apache, they’re equipped with target acquisition designation sights and laser range finder/designators. Our Chinooks have the capacity to withstand hits from rounds up to twenty-three millimeters. As for offensive weaponry, they’re carrying a full complement of Hellfire antitank missiles, three M230 thirty-millimeter chain guns, and twelve Hydra 70 rockets, which are fired from the M261 nineteen-tube rocket launcher. The rockets are fitted with unitary warheads with impact-detonating fuzes or remote-set multi-option fuzes.”

  The president laughed somewhat too loudly. “That kind of detail should satisfy even you, Bud.”

  “Pardon my confusion, Director,” Halliday persisted, “but I’m baffled. You haven’t mentioned the severe breach of CI security at your headquarters.”

  “What breach?” The president looked bewildered, then, his face filling with blood, angry. “What’s Bud talking about?”

  “We were hit with a computer virus,” the DCI said smoothly. How in hell did he find out about the virus? “Our IT people assure us the integrity of the core mainframe wasn’t breached. Our Sentinel firewall ensured that. They’re purging the system even as we speak.”

  “If I were in your shoes, Director,” Secretary Halliday pressed on, “I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t be downplaying any electronic breach of agency security. Not with these goddamn terrorists breathing down our necks.”

  As any loyal vassal would, LaValle picked up the interrogation. “Director, you’re telling us that your people are purging the virus. But the fact remains that your agency was electronically attacked.”

  “It isn’t the first time,” the DCI said. “Believe me, it won’t be the last.”

  “Still,” LaValle continued, “an attack from the outside—”

  “It wasn’t from the outside.” The DCI fixed the Pentagon intelligence czar in his formidable gaze. “Due to the alert sleuthing of my deputy, Martin Lindros, we discovered an electronic trail that led back to the mole—the late Tim Hytner. His last action was to insert the virus into the system under the guise of ‘decrypting’ a Dujja cipher that turned out to be the binary code culprit.”

  The Old Man’s gaze swung to the president. “Now please, let’s return to the grave matter at hand.” How many more unsuccessful attacks must I endure from these two before the president puts an end to it? he wondered sourly.

  The atmosphere in the War Room was tense as the images flickered across multiple screens. Every mouth was dry, every eye glued to the plasma screen that showed the progress of the four CI Chinooks over the mountainous terrain. The graphics were the same as those of a video game, but once the engagement began all similarities to a game would end.

  “They’ve overflown the westernmost wadi,” the DCI reported. “Now all that separates them from the Dujja facility is a minor mountain chain. They’re taking the gap just to the southwest of their current position. They’ll go in two by two.”

  We’ve got RF,” Marlin Dorph reported to the DCI. He meant radiation fog, an odd phenomenon that sometimes occurred at dawn or during the night, arising from the radiational cooling of the earth’s surface, when a layer of relatively moist air was trapped just above surface level by drier air aloft.

  “Do you have visual on the target?” the DCI’s voice, thin and metallicized, buzzed in his ear.

  “Negative, sir. We’re heading in for a closer look, but two of the Chinooks are holding back in perimeter formation.” He turned to Lowrie, who nodded. “Norris,” he said to the pilot in the heli on their left wing, “take ’er down.”

  He watched as the accompanying Chinook dove down, its rotors beating the RF, dissipating it.

  “There!” Lowrie yelled.

  Dorph could see a group of perhaps six armed men. Startled, they looked up. He allowed his eyes to follow the path they were taking, saw a cluster of low, bunkerlike buildings. They looked like structures typical of the terrorist training camps, but that’s just how Dujja would camouflage its base.

  The low-flying Chinook was loosing its M230 chains: The ground erupted with a hail of 30mm rounds. The men fell, fired back, scattered, fired again, were mowed down.

  “Let’s go!” Dorph spoke into his mike. “The complex is half a klick dead ahead.” The Chinook began its dive. Dorph could hear the racket increase as the other two helis left their perimeter patrol, heading in after him.

  “Hellfires up!” he called. “I want one missile from each ship launched on my signal.” The different angles would cause even the most heavily reinforced walls to collapse.

  He could see the other three helis as they converged on the target. “On my mark,” Dorph barked. “Now!”

  Four Hellfire missiles were loosed from the undercarriages of the Chinooks. They homed in on the building complex, detonating within seconds of one another. A ball of flame erupted. The shock wave juddered through the heli as great gouts of oily black smoke rose from the target.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Soraya Moore, waiting in line to board at Atatürk International Airport for her flight to D.C., took out her cell phone. Ever since she’d left Bourne, she’d been thinking about the situation at headquarters. Bourne was right: The false Lindros had set himself up in a perfect position. But why had he taken all this trouble to infiltrate CI? For its intel? Soraya didn’t think so. Fadi was smart enough to know that there was no way his man could smuggle the data past CI’s watertight security. He could only be there to deter Typhon’s efforts to stop Dujja. To her, that meant an offensive plan. Active disinformation. Because if CI

personnel were off on a wild goose chase, Fadi and his team could sneak into the United States under the radar. It was classic misdirection, the conjuror’s oldest trick. But it was often the most effective.

  She knew that Bourne had said they couldn’t approach the DCI, but she could do the next best thing: contact Anne Held. She could tell Anne anything; Anne would find a way to approach the Old Man without anyone else knowing. That effectively cut out the mole, whoever he might be.

  Soraya moved forward in the line. The flight was boarding. She thought through her idea again, then dialed Anne’s private number. It rang and rang, and she found herself praying that Anne would answer. She didn’t dare leave a voice-mail message, not even for Anne to call her back. On the seventh ring Anne answered.

  “Anne, thank God.” The line was moving in earnest now. “It’s Soraya. Listen, I have very little time. I’m on my way back to D.C. Don’t say anything until I’ve finished. I’ve discovered that the Martin Lindros whom Bourne brought back from Ethiopia is an impostor.”

  “An impostor?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But that’s impossible!”

  “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “Soraya, I don’t know what’s happened to you over there, but believe me, Lindros is who he says he is. He even passed the retinal scan.”

  “Please, let me finish. This man—whoever he is—is working for Fadi. He’s been planted to throw us off Dujja’s trail. Anne, I need you to tell the Old Man.”

  “Now I know you’ve gone crackers. I tell the Old Man that Lindros is a plant and he’ll have me institutionalized.”

  Soraya was almost up to the boarding gate. She’d run out of time. “Anne, you’ve got to believe me. You have to find a way to convince him.”

  “Not without some proof,” Anne said. “Anything of substance will do.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “I’ve got a pen. Give me your flight info. I’ll meet you at the airport myself. We’ll figure something out before we get to HQ.”