Page 43 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  He had Muta ibn Aziz. All that remained was to reel him in. “I saw a doctor once who said that descriptions of things I’d forgotten—even fragments—could unlock those memories.”

  They were nearing the border. He started the gradual descent that took them down to the hogback ridges of the mountain chain that did such an expert job at hiding many of the world’s most dangerous terrorist cadres.

  Muta stared at him incredulously. “Let me get this straight. You want me to help you.” He gave a joyless laugh. “I don’t think so.”

  “All right.” Bourne turned his full attention on the topography as it began to reveal its gross details. “It was you who asked. I don’t care one way or another, really.”

  Muta’s face contorted first one way, then another. He was under some form of terrible pressure, and Bourne wondered what it was. Outwardly he gave no sign that he cared, but he felt he needed to up the ante, so he said, “Six minutes to landing, maybe a little less. You’d better brace yourself as best you can.” Glancing over at Muta ibn Aziz, he laughed. “Oh, yeah, you’re already strapped in.”

  And then Muta said, “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Unfortunately,” Karim said, “LaValle was right.”

  The DCI flinched. Clearly he didn’t want to hear more bad news. “Typhon routinely piggybacks on CI transmissions.”

  “True enough, sir. But after some backbreaking electronic spadework, I discovered three piggybacked communiqués I can’t account for.”

  They sat side by side in the sixth pew on the right arm of the arc inside the Foundry Methodist Church on 16th Street NW. Behind them, affixed to the back, was a plaque that read: IN THIS PEW, SIDE BY SIDE, SAT PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL AT THE NATIONAL CHRISTMAS SERVICE IN 1941. Which meant that the service had taken place just three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—dark days, indeed, for America. As for Britain, it had gained, through a painful disaster, an important ally. This spot, therefore, held great meaning for the Old Man. It was where he came to pray, to gain insight, the moral strength to do the dark and difficult deeds he was often required to do.

  As he stared down at the dossier his second in command had handed him, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that another of those deeds lay dead ahead of him.

  He let out a long breath, opened the dossier. And there it was in black and white: the fearsome truth. Still, he raised his head, said in an unsteady voice, “Anne?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir.” Karim was careful to keep his hands palms up in his lap. He needed to seem as devastated as the Old Man clearly was. The news had shaken the DCI to his roots. “All three communiqués came from a PDA in her possession. One not CI-authorized, one we had no knowledge of until now. It seems she was also able to replace and doctor intel, falsely implicating Tim Hytner.”

  For a long time, the DCI said nothing. They had kept their voices down because of the church’s astoundingly fine acoustics, but when he spoke again his companion was obliged to lean forward in order to hear him.

  “What was the nature of the three communiqués?”

  “They were sent via an encrypted band,” Karim said. “I have my best people working on a deciphering solution.”

  The Old Man nodded absently. “Good work, Martin. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Today, at this moment, he looked every year of his age and then some. With his trusted Anne’s terrible betrayal, a vital spark had gone out of him. He sat hunched over, his shoulders up around his ears, as if anticipating further psychic blows.

  “Sir,” Karim said softly. “We have to take immediate action.”

  The DCI nodded, but his gaze was lost in the middle distance, focused on thoughts and memories his companion could not imagine.

  “I think this should be handled privately,” Karim continued. “Just you and me. What do you say?”

  The Old Man’s rheumy eyes swung around to take in his second’s face. “Yes, a private solution, by all means.” His voice was whispery. It cracked on the word solution.

  Karim stood. “Shall we go?”

  The DCI looked up at him, a black terror swimming behind his eyes. “Now?”

  “That would be best, sir—for everyone.” He helped the Old Man to his feet. “She’s not at headquarters. I imagine she’s home.”

  Then he handed the DCI a gun.

  Within several hours, Katya returned to the infirmary to check on the swelling of Lindros’s throat. She knelt by the side of the low cot on which he lay. Her fingers stumbled over her previous handiwork so badly that tears came to her eyes.

  “I’m no good at this,” she said softly, as if to herself. “I’m no good at all.”

  Lindros watched her, remembering the end of their last conversation. He wondered whether he should say something or whether opening his mouth would just push her further away.

  After a long, tense silence, Katya said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  Her eyes found his at last. They were an astonishing shade of blue-gray, like the sky just before the onset of a storm.

  “And now I believe that Costin wanted Fadi to hurt me. Why? Why would he want someone to do that? Because he was afraid I would leave him? Because he wanted me to see how dangerous the world outside his world was? I don’t know. But he didn’t have to…” She put a hand up to her cheek, winced at the touch of her own delicate fingertips. “He didn’t have to let Fadi hurt me.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Lindros said. “He shouldn’t have. You know that.”

  She nodded.

  “Then help me,” Lindros went on. “Otherwise, neither of us is getting out of here alive.”

  “I… I don’t know whether I can.”

  “Then I’ll help you.” Lindros sat up. “If you let me, I’ll help you change. But it has to be what you want. You have to want it badly enough to risk everything.”

  “Everything.” She gave him a smile so filled with remorse, it nearly broke his heart. “I was born with nothing. I grew up with nothing. And then, through a chance encounter, I was given everything. At least, that’s what I was told, and for a time I believed it. But in a way that life was worse than having nothing. At least the nothing was real. And then Costin came. He promised to take me away from the unreality. So I married him. But his world was just as false as the one I’d made for myself, and I thought, Where do I belong? Nowhere.”

  Lindros was moved to briefly touch the back of her hand. “We’re both outsiders.”

  Katya turned her head slightly to glance at the guards. “Do you know a way out of here?”

  “Yes,” Lindros said, “but it will take both of us.” He saw the fear in her eyes, but also the spark of hope.

  At length, she said, “What must I do?”

  Anne was in the midst of packing when she heard a car’s large engine thrumming on the street outside her house. As she picked her head up, it stopped. She almost went back to her packing, but some sixth sense or paranoia caused her to cross her second-floor bedroom and peer out the window.

  Below her, she saw the DCI’s long black armored car. The Old Man stepped out of it, followed by Jamil. Her heart skipped a beat. What was happening? Why had they come to her house? Had Soraya somehow got through to the Old Man, told him of her treachery? But no, Jamil was with him. Jamil would never let Soraya anywhere near CI headquarters, let alone allowing her access to the Old Man.

  But what if…?

  Running purely on instinct now, she went to her dresser, opened the second drawer, scrabbled in it for the S&W she had returned to its customary hiding place when she’d returned home from the Northeast quadrant.

  The bell rang downstairs, making her jump, even though she had been expecting it. Slipping the S&W into her waistband at the small of her back, she left her bedroom and descended the polished wood stairs to the front door. Through the diamonds of translucent yellow glass, she could see the silhouettes of the two men, both so important

to her throughout her adult life.

  With a slow exhalation of breath, she grabbed the brass handle, painted a smile on her face, opened the door.

  “Hello, Anne.” The Old Man seemed to reflect her own lacquered smile back at her. “I’m sorry to disturb you at home, but something rather pressing…” At this point he faltered.

  “It’s no bother at all,” Anne replied. “I could use the company.”

  She stepped back, and they entered the small marble-floored vestibule. A spray of hothouse lilies rose from a slender cloisonné vase on a small oval table with delicate cabriolet legs. She led them into the living room with its facing silk-covered sofas on either side of a red-veined white-stone fireplace, above which was a wooden mantelpiece. Anne offered them a seat, but everyone seemed inclined to remain standing. The men did not take off their coats.

  She dared not look at Jamil’s face for fear of what she might find there. On the other hand, the Old Man’s face was no bargain. It was drained of blood, the skin hanging loosely on the bones. When had he grown so old? she wondered. Where had the time gone? It seemed like just yesterday that she had been a wild child at college in London, with nothing ahead of her but a bright, endless future.

  “I expect you’d like some tea,” she said to his mummy’s face. “And I have a tin of your favorite ginger biscuits in the larder.” But her attempt to retain a degree of normalcy fell flat.

  “Nothing, thank you, Anne,” the DCI said. “For either of us.” He looked truly pained now, as if he was fighting the effects of a kidney stone or a tumor. He took from his overcoat a rolled-up dossier. Spreading it out on one of the soft sofa backs, he said, “I’m afraid we’ve been presented with something of an unpleasant realization.” His forefinger moved over the computer printout as if it were a Ouija board. “We know, Anne.”

  Anne felt as if she had been delivered a death blow. She could scarcely catch her breath. Nevertheless, she said in a perfectly normal voice, “Know what?”

  “We know all about you.” He could not yet bring himself to meet her eyes. “We know that you’ve been communicating with the enemy.”

  “What? I don’t—”

  At last, the DCI lifted his gaze, impaled her with his implacable eyes. She knew that terrifying look; she’d seen it directed at others the Old Man had crossed off his list. She’d never seen or heard from any of them again.

  “We know that you are the enemy.” His voice was full of rage and loathing. She knew there was nothing he despised more than a traitor.

  Automatically, her eyes went to Jamil. What was he thinking? Why wasn’t he coming to her defense? And then, looking into his blank face, she understood everything—she understood how he had seduced her with both his physical presence and his philosophical manifesto. She understood how he had used her. She was cannon fodder, as expendable as anyone in his cadre.

  The thing that upset her most was that she should have known—from the very beginning, she should have seen through him. But she had been so sure of herself, so willing to rebel against the fussy old-line aristocracy from which she was descended. He had seen how eager she was to throw a bag of shit in her parents’ faces. He’d taken advantage of her zeal, as well as of her body. She had committed treason for him; so many people would lose their lives because of her complicity. My God, my God!

  She turned to Jamil now, said, “Fucking me was the least of it, wasn’t it?”

  That was the last thing she ever said, and she never got to hear his reply, if he’d ever meant to give one, because the DCI had his gun out, and shot her three times in the head. He was still a crack shot, even after all these years.

  Anne’s blind eyes were on Jamil as her body collapsed from under her.

  “Damn her.” The Old Man turned away. His voice was full of venom. “Goddamn her.”

  “I’ll take care of the disposition of the body,” Karim said. “Also, a news release with an appropriate cover story. And I’ll call her parents myself.”

  “No,” the DCI said dully. “That’s my job.”

  Karim walked over to where his former lover lay curled in a pool of blood. He looked down at her. What was he thinking? That he needed to go upstairs, open the second drawer of her dresser. Then, as he turned the corpse over with the toe of his shoe, he saw that luck was still very much with him. He wouldn’t have to go into her bedroom after all. He said a silent prayer of thanks to Allah.

  Snapping on a pair of latex gloves, he pulled the S&W from its place at the small of her back. He noted the fact she’d had the presence of mind to arm herself. Staring down at her face for a moment, he tried to summon up even the tiniest bit of emotion for this infidel. Nothing came. His heart beat in the same rhythm it always did. He couldn’t say that he’d miss her. She had served her purpose, even helping him dismember Overton. Which meant, simply, that he had chosen well. She was an instrument he had trained to use against his enemies, nothing more.

  He rose, stood straddling Anne’s crumpled form. The DCI’s back was still to him. “Sir,” he said. “There’s something here you need to see.”

  The Old Man took a deep breath. He wiped eyes that had been wet with tears. “What is it, Martin?” he said, turning.

  And Karim shot him quite neatly through the heart with Anne Held’s S&W.

  It wasn’t an accident.”

  Bourne, concentrating more than he had to on his pre-landing routine, contrived to ignore this bombshell. They were overflying Zhawar Kili, a known al-Qaeda hotbed until the U.S. military bombed it in November 2001. At length, he said, “What wasn’t an accident?”

  “Sarah ibn Ashef’s death. It wasn’t an accident.” Muta ibn Aziz was breathless, terrified, and liberated all at once. How he’d wanted to tell his abominable secret to someone! It had grown around his heart as the shell of an oyster excretes, layer by layer, over time becoming something humped and ugly.

  “Of course it was,” Bourne insisted. He had to insist now; it was the only way to keep the spell going, keep Muta ibn Aziz talking. “I should know. I shot her.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Muta ibn Aziz began to worry his lower lip with the ends of his upper teeth. “You and your partner were too far away to make accurate shots. My brother, Abbud ibn Aziz, and I shot her.”

  Bourne did turn to him now, but with a deeply skeptical look. “You’re making this up.”

  Muta ibn Aziz appeared hurt. “Why would I do that?”

  “Let’s go down the list, shall we? You’re continuing to screw with my head. You did it to get Fadi and his brother to come after me.” He frowned. “Have we met before? Do I know you? Do you and your brother harbor a grudge against me?”

  “No, no, and no.” He was annoyed, just as Bourne wanted him to be. “The truth is… I can hardly say it…”

  He turned away for a moment, and Bourne was listening closely for what was to come. The final approach to Miran Shah the pilot had laid out was coming up. It was in the center of a narrow valley—defile would be the more accurate term, now that Bourne saw it—between two mountains just inside the wild and woolly western border of Pakistan.

  The sky was clear—a deep, piercing blue—and at this time of day the sun glare was minimal. The gray-brown mountains of altered volcanic rock from the Kurram River group—limestone, dark chert, green shale—looked stripped, barren, devoid of life. Automatically, he studied the vicinity. He scrutinized the furrowed mountainsides to the south and west for cave openings, east the length of the defile for bunkers, north through ruffled hillsides broken by a deeply shadowed, rock-strewn ravine. But there were no signs of Dujja’s nuclear complex, nothing man-made, not even a hut or a campsite.

  He was coming in a trifle hot. He slowed the Sovereign’s speed, saw the runway in front of him. Unlike the one he’d taken off from, this was made of tarmac. Still no sign of habitation, let alone a modern laboratory complex. Had he come to the wrong place? Was this another in Fadi’s endless bag of tricks? Was it, in fact, a trap?

  Too lat

e now to worry about that. Wheels and flaps were down. He’d reduced speed into the green zone.

  “You’re coming in too low,” Muta ibn Aziz said in sudden agitation. “You’ll hit the runway too soon. Pull up! For God’s sake pull up!”

  Bourne overflew the first eighth of the runway, guiding the Sovereign down until the wheels struck the tarmac. They were down, taxiing along the runway. Bourne cut the engines, much of the interior power. That was when he saw a rush of shadows coming from his right side.

  He had only time to realize that Muta ibn Aziz must have phoned Bourne’s identity to the people at Miran Shah before the starboard bulkhead blew inward with a horrific roar. The Sovereign shuddered and, like a wounded elephant, fell to its knees, its front wheels and struts blown out.

  Flying debris made mincemeat of almost everything in the cockpit. Dials were shattered, levers sheared off. Wires dangled from ripped-apart bays in the ceiling. The trussed Muta ibn Aziz, who’d been on the side of the plane that was now crumpled in on itself, was lying underneath a major piece of the fuselage. Bourne, strapped in on the far side of the cockpit, had escaped with a multitude of minor cuts, bruises, and what felt to his dazed brain like a mild concussion.

  Instinct forced him to push the blackness from the periphery of his vision, reach up, and release his harness. He staggered over to Muta ibn Aziz, a frozen tundra of shattered glass crunching underfoot. He choked on air full of broken needles of metal, fiberglass, and superheated plastic.

  Seeing that Muta was breathing, he hauled the twisted wreckage, charred and scored and still burning hot, off to the side. But when he knelt down, he saw that a shard of metal, roughly the size and shape of a sword blade, had lodged itself in Muta’s gut.

  He peered down at the man, then slapped his face hard. Muta’s eyes fluttered open, focusing with difficulty.

  “I wasn’t making it up,” he said in a thin, reedy voice. Blood was leaking out of his mouth, down his chin. It pooled in the hollow of his throat, dark, throwing off the scent of copper.

  “You’re dying,” Bourne said. “Tell me what happened with Sarah ibn Ashef.”