Page 38 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  “In that case, the sooner we get back to headquarters, the better, don’t you think?” Anne threw an arm around Soraya’s shoulders, hurrying her through the electric doors into the damp chill of the Washington winter. Glow from the floodlit monuments engraved a majestic pattern on the dark, low clouds. Anne guided Soraya into a CI-issue Pontiac sedan, then slid behind the wheel.

  They joined the long line of vehicles circling like fish around a reef, heading toward the exit. On the way into Washington, Soraya, leaning slightly forward, glanced in the side mirror. It was habit, long ago ingrained in her. She did it as a matter of course, whether or not she was on a field mission. She saw the black Ford behind them, thought nothing of it, until her second glance. It was now one car behind them, but keeping pace in the right-hand lane. Not enough to say anything yet, but when it was still in place on her third look, she felt under the circumstances she had enough evidence to consider that they were being followed.

  She turned to Anne to tell her, then saw her glance in the rearview mirror. No doubt she’d seen the black Ford as well. But when she didn’t mention it or execute any evasive maneuvers, Soraya felt her stomach slowly clench. She tried to calm down by telling herself that after all Anne was the Old Man’s assistant. She was office-trained, unaccustomed to even the rudiments of fieldwork.

  She cleared her throat. “Anne, I think we’re being followed.”

  Anne signaled, moving them into the right-hand lane. “I’d better slow down.”

  “What? No. What are you doing?”

  “If they slow down, then we’ll know—”

  “No, you’ve got to speed up,” Soraya said. “Get away from them as quickly as possible.”

  “I want to see who’s in that car,” Anne said, slowing even more as she steered toward the shoulder.

  “You’re crazy.”

  Soraya reached for the wheel, abruptly reared back as she saw the Smith & Wesson J-frame compact gun in Anne’s hand.

  “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”

  They were rolling across the shoulder, toward the low metal fence. “After everything you told me, I didn’t want to leave headquarters unarmed.”

  “Do you even know how to use that?”

  The black Ford followed them off the road, pulling up behind them. Two men with dark complexions got out, came toward them.

  “I take shooting practice twice a month,” Anne said, pressing the muzzle of the S&W against Soraya’s temple. “Now get out of the car.”

  “Anne, what are you—?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  Soraya nodded. “All right.” Edging away, she pushed down on the door handle. As she saw Anne’s eyes move toward the door, she struck upward with her left arm, deflecting Anne’s right arm upward. The gun exploded, the bullet tearing a hole in the Pontiac’s roof.

  Soraya slammed her cocked elbow into the side of Anne’s face. Galvanized by the gunshot, the men ran toward the Pontiac. Soraya, seeing them coming, quickly leaned across Anne’s slumped torso, opened the door, pushed her out.

  Just as the men, guns drawn, reached the rear of the Pontiac, Soraya slid behind the wheel, threw it into gear, and stepped on the accelerator. She bounced along the shoulder for a moment then, finding a potential gap in the traffic, pulled out, tires squealing and smoking. Her last glimpse of the men was of them running back to the black Ford, but what made her hands tremble on the wheel was the sight of Anne Held supported between them, helped into the back of their car.

  Nesim Hatun was reclining on a carved wooden bench softened by a marshmallow mound of silk pillows beneath the clattering green fronds of his beloved date palm. He was popping fresh dates into his mouth, one by one, chewing thoughtfully, swallowing the sweet flesh, spitting out the white spear-point pits into a shallow dish. Beside his right elbow was a small octagonal table on which stood a chased silver tray filled with a teapot and a pair of small glass tumblers.

  As his son brought Bourne—who had peeled off his beard before entering the Turkish bath—into the shade of the date palm, Hatun’s head swung around, his vulture’s face impassive. His olive eyes did not hide his curiosity, however.

  “Merhaba, my friend.”

  “Merhaba, Nesim Hatun. My name is Abu Bakr.”

  Hatun scratched at his tiny, pointed beard. “Named after the companion of our Prophet Muhammad.”

  “A thousand apologies for disturbing the tranquility of your magnificent garden.”

  Nesim Hatun nodded at his guest’s good manners. “My garden is but a miserable patch of earth.” Dismissing his son, he gestured. “Please join me, my friend.”

  Bourne rolled out the prayer rug so that its silk threads shimmered in the golden shots of sunlight that found their way between the palm fronds.

  Hatun slipped off one slipperlike shoe and placed his bare foot on the rug. “A beautiful example of the weaver’s art. I thank you, my friend, for this unexpected largesse.”

  “A token altogether unworthy of you, Nesim Hatun.”

  “Ah, well, Yevgeny Feyodovich never presented me with such a gift.” His eyes rose to impale Bourne’s. “And how is our mutual friend?”

  “When I left him,” Bourne said, “he’d made rather a mess of things.”

  Hatun’s face froze into stone. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then let me enlighten you,” Bourne said softly. “Yevgeny Feyodovich did precisely what you paid him to do. How do I know? Because I took Bourne to Otrada Beach, I led him into the trap Fadi had prepared for him. I did what Yevgeny Feyodovich hired me to do.”

  “Here is my problem, Abu Bakr.” Hatun pitched his torso forward. “Yevgeny Feyodovich never would have hired a Turk for this particular piece of work.”

  “Of course not. Bourne would have been suspicious of such a man.”

  Hatun scrutinized Bourne with his vulture’s face. “So. The question remains: Who are you?”

  “My name is Bogdan Illiyanovich,” he said, identifying himself as the man he’d killed at Otrada Beach. He had inserted the prosthetics he’d purchased in the theatrical supply store in Beyoglu. As a result, the shapes of jawline and cheeks were significantly altered. His front teeth slightly splayed.

  “You speak excellent Turkish, for a Ukrainian.” Hatun said this with a certain amount of contempt. “And now I suppose your boss wants the second half of his payment.”

  “Yevgeny Feyodovich isn’t in any condition to receive anything. As for me, I want what I have earned.”

  Some unnamed emotion seemed to come over Nesim Hatun. He poured them both hot sweet tea, handing one of the glasses to Bourne.

  When they had both sipped, he said, “Perhaps that wound on your left side should be looked after.”

  Bourne glanced down at the specks of blood on his clothes. “A scratch. It’s nothing.”

  Nesim Hatun was about to reply when the son who had brought Bourne to see him appeared, gave a silent signal.

  He rose. “Please excuse me for a moment. I have a bit of unfinished business to attend to. I assure you I won’t be long.” Following his son through an archway, he disappeared behind a filigreed wooden screen.

  After a short interval, Bourne rose, strolling through the garden as if admiring it. In this fashion, he made his way through the same archway, stood on the garden side of the screen. He could hear two men speaking in hushed voices. One was Nesim Hatun. The other…

  “—using a messenger, Muta ibn Aziz,” Nesim Hatun said. “As you have said, this late in the plan it would not do to have any cell phone communication intercepted. And yet now you tell me that just such a thing has happened.”

  “The news was vital to both of us,” Muta ibn Aziz said. “Fadi has been in communication with his brother. Jason Bourne is dead.” Muta ibn Aziz took a step toward the other. “That being the case, your role in this matter is now ended.”

  Muta ibn Aziz embraced Hatun, kissed him on both cheeks. “I leave tonight at twenty hundred hou

rs. I go straight to Fadi. With Bourne dead, there will be no further delay. The endgame has begun.”

  “La ilaha ill allah!” Hatun breathed. “Now come, my friend, I will lead you out.”

  Bourne turned, went silently back through the garden, swiftly down the side corridor and out of the hammam.

  Soraya, her foot pressed against the accelerator, knew she was in trouble. Keeping one eye in the rearview mirror for the Ford, she pulled out her cell phone and thumbed it on. There was a soft chime. She had a message. She dialed in, got Bourne’s message about Anne.

  There was a bitter taste in her mouth. So Anne was the mole after all. The bitch! How could she? Soraya pounded her fist against the steering wheel. Goddamn her to hell.

  As she was putting the phone away, she heard the crunch of metal against metal, felt a sickening jar, had to struggle to keep the Pontiac from screeching over into a truck in the next lane.

  “What the—!”

  A Lincoln Aviator, looking as big and menacing as an M1 Abrams tank, had sideswiped her. Now it was ahead of her. Without warning, it decelerated and she banged into it. Its brake lights weren’t working—or they had been deliberately disconnected.

  She swerved, switching lanes, then came abreast of the Aviator. She tried to peer in, to see who was driving, but the windows were tinted so darkly she couldn’t even make out a silhouette.

  The Aviator lurched toward her, its side smashing the Pontiac’s passenger doors. Pressing the window buttons repeatedly, Soraya found them stuck fast. Replacing her right foot on the gas pedal with her left, she kicked at the ruined door with the heel of her right foot. It didn’t budge; it, too, was jammed shut. With a burst of anxiety, she returned to her normal driving position. Her heart was racing, her pulse pounding in her ears.

  She had to get off the highway. She began to look for signs for the next exit. It was three kilometers away. Sweating profusely, she moved over into the right-hand lane so she’d be in position to take the upcoming exit ramp.

  That was when the Aviator roared up on her left and swerved hard into her, crumpling the doors on that side. Clearly it had dropped back in the traffic flow so that it could come up on her from behind. She hit the window button, tried to turn the inside handle, but this window and door were jammed shut as well. Now none of them would open. She was effectively trapped, a prisoner inside the speeding Pontiac.

  Twenty-seven

  BOURNE RETRIEVED his satchel from behind the urn then walked quickly, silently around the side of the hammam, searching for the street onto which the rear door to Nesim Hatun’s establishment opened. He found it without difficulty, saw a man walking away from the hammam’s rear door.

  The messenger Muta ibn Aziz, who would lead him back to Fadi.

  As he walked, Bourne opened the satchel, found the can of spirit gum, and reapplied his beard. Returned to his Semitic disguise, he followed Muta ibn Aziz out of the alley into the clamorous bustle of Sultanahmet. For close to forty minutes, he kept pace with his quarry, who neither paused nor looked around him. It was clear he knew where he was headed. In the overcrowded heart of the district, with the flow of pedestrians moving toward all points of the compass, it was not easy keeping Muta ibn Aziz in sight. On the other hand, the relentless crowds also worked to Bourne’s benefit, for it was easy to keep himself anonymous. Even if his target was using the reflective surfaces of vehicle and shop windows, he’d never spot his tail. They crossed from Sultanahmet into Eminonu.

  At length, the domed mass of Sirkeci Station loomed up in front of him. Was Muta ibn Aziz taking a train to where Fadi was located? But no, Bourne saw him bypass the main entrance, walk briskly on, as he threaded his way through the throng.

  He and Bourne skirted a huge knot of tourists that had formed a semicircle around three Mevlevi, Whirling Dervishes, their long white dresses unfurled around them as they spun in their ecstatic sema to the drone of ancient Islamic hymns. As they whirled, the Mevlevi threw off sprays of saffron- and myrrh-scented sweat. The air around them seemed alive with the mystic unknown, another world glimpsed in the blink of an eye before vanishing again.

  Opposite the station was the Adalar Iskelesi dock. Bourne loitered inconspicuously with a clutch of German tourists while he watched Muta ibn Aziz purchase a one-way ticket to Büyükada. He must be leaving from there, Bourne thought, most likely by boat. But to where? It didn’t matter, because Bourne was determined to be on whatever mode of transport Muta ibn Aziz chose to take him to Fadi.

  For the time being, exiting her mashed Pontiac was the least of Soraya’s problems. Topping the list was the Aviator hard on her tail. The sign for the next exit blurred by overhead, and she prepared herself. She saw the two-lane off-ramp, took the left-hand lane. The Aviator, half a car length away, followed her. There were cars ahead of her in both lanes, but a quick check in her rearview mirror showed her the break in the exiting traffic she was hoping for. Now if only the Pontiac’s transmission wouldn’t fall out from the punishment she was about to give it.

  She swung the wheel hard over. The Pontiac veered into the right-hand lane of the off-ramp. Before the Aviator’s driver could fully react, Soraya slammed the Pontiac into reverse and stepped on the gas pedal.

  She shot past the Aviator, which was just now swinging into her lane. Its rear end took out the headlight on her side. Then she was accelerating away, back up the off-ramp. There was a dissonant clamor of horns, shouts, along with the squeal of tires as the cars behind her got out of her way.

  With an insistent warning from its horn, the Aviator itself reversed, following her. Near the top of the ramp a motorist in a gray Toyota panicked, slamming into the car behind it. Chrome and plastic hanging from its front, it slewed around blocking both lanes, effectively cutting off the Aviator.

  Soraya backed onto the breakdown lane of the highway, then shifted the Pontiac into drive and took off, heading into Washington proper.

  It will be easy to ram the Toyota out of the way,” the driver of the Aviator said.

  “Don’t bother,” the man in the backseat replied. “Let her go.”

  Though they were diplomats stationed at the Saudi embassy, they also belonged to Karim’s Washington sleeper cell. As the Aviator reached the city streets, the man in the backseat activated a GPS. At once, a grid of downtown D.C. appeared, along with a moving pinpoint of light. He punched a number into his cell phone.

  “The subject slipped the noose,” the man in the backseat said. “She’s driving the Pontiac we fitted with the electronic tracking device. It’s heading in your direction. Judging from the speed, it should be in range within thirty seconds.”

  He waited patiently until the driver of the black Ford said, “Got her. It looks like she’s heading toward the northeast.”

  “Follow her,” the man in the backseat said. “You know what to do.”

  During the ferry ride to the island of Büyükada, Bourne stayed with a family of Chinese tourists with whom he struck up a conversation. He talked with them in Mandarin, joking with the children, pointing out the important buildings as they left Istanbul behind, recounting the city’s storied history. All the while, he kept Muta ibn Aziz in view.

  Fadi’s messenger stood by himself, leaning against the ferry’s railing, staring out across the water toward the smudge of land toward which they were headed. He neither moved nor looked around.

  When Muta ibn Aziz turned and walked inside, Bourne excused himself from the Chinese family and followed. He saw the messenger ordering tea at the onboard café. Bourne wandered over, poring through a rack of picture postcards and maps. Choosing a map of Büyükada and vicinity, he managed to reach the cashier just ahead of Muta ibn Aziz. He spoke to the cashier in Arabic. The mustachioed man with a gold cross hanging from a chain around his neck shook his head, replying in Turkish. Bourne gestured that he didn’t understand.

  Muta ibn Aziz leaned over, said, “Pardon me, friend, but the filthy infidel is asking for payment.”

  Bourne showe

d a handful of coins. Muta ibn Aziz plucked up the right change and gave it to the cashier. Bourne waited until he had paid for his own tea, then said, “Thank you, friend. I’m afraid Turkish sounds like pig grunts to me.”

  Muta ibn Aziz laughed. “An apt phrase.” He gestured, and together they walked out onto the deck.

  Bourne followed the messenger to his spot at the rail. The sun was strong, counteracting the chill of the wind coming in off the Sea of Marmara. The feathery fingertips of cirrus clouds dotted the deep blue of the winter sky.

  “The Christians are the swine of the world,” Muta ibn Aziz said.

  “And the Jews are the apes,” Bourne replied.

  “Peace be upon you, brother. I see we read the same schoolbooks.”

  “Jihad in the path of God is the summit of Islam,” Bourne said. “I needed no schoolmaster to explain this to me. It seems to me that I was born knowing it.”

  “Like me, you are Wahhabi.” Muta ibn Aziz gave him a considered sidelong glance. “Just as we were successful in the past when we came together with the Muslims to evict the Christian crusaders from Palestine, so will we emerge victorious against the latter-day crusaders who occupy our lands.”

  Bourne nodded. “We think alike, brother.”

  Muta ibn Aziz sipped his tea. “Do these righteous beliefs move you to act, brother? Or are they the philosophy of the café and coffeehouse?”

  “In Sharm el-Sheikh and in Gaza I have drawn the blood of the infidel.”

  “Individual endeavors are to be applauded,” Muta ibn Aziz mused, “but the greater the organization, the more damage can be inflicted on our enemies.”

  “Just so.” Time to bait the hook, Bourne thought. “Again and again I have thought of joining Dujja, but always the same consideration has stopped me.”

  The paper cup of tea paused halfway to Muta ibn Aziz’s lips. “And what is that?”

  Slowly, slowly, Bourne cautioned himself. “I don’t know whether I can say, brother. After all, we have just met. Your intentions—”