Page 5 of The Bourne Betrayal (Jason Bourne 5)

  Lerner must have alerted the case officers to his arrival, because he saw a striking young woman whom he judged to be in her midthirties detach herself from a view screen and come toward him. He at once knew that she was or had been, at any rate, a field agent. Her stride was not too long, not too short, not too fast, not too slow. It was, to sum it up in one word, anonymous. Because an individual’s stride was as distinctive as his fingerprints, it was one of the best ways to cull an adversary out of a swarming pack of pedestrians, even one whose disguise was otherwise first-rate.

  She had a face that was both strong and proud, the chiseled prow of a sleek ship knifing through seas that would capsize inferior vessels. The large, deep blue eyes were set like jewels in the cinnamon dusk of her Arabian face.

  “You must be Soraya Moore,” he said, “the senior case officer.”

  Her smile showed for a moment, then was quickly hidden behind a cloud of confusion and abrupt coolness. “That’s right, Mr. Bourne. This way.”

  She led him down the length of the vast, teeming space to the second conference room from the left. Opening the frosted-glass door, she watched him pass with that same odd curiosity. But then considering his often adversarial relationship with CI, perhaps it wasn’t odd after all.

  There was a man inside, younger than Soraya by at least several years. He was of middling height, athletic, with sandy hair and a fair complexion. He was sitting at an oval glass conference table working on a laptop. The screen was filled with what looked to be an exceptionally difficult crossword puzzle.

  He glanced up only when Soraya cleared her throat.

  “Tim Hytner,” he said without rising.

  When Bourne took a seat between the two case officers, he discovered that the crossword Hytner was trying to solve was, in fact, a cipher—and quite a sophisticated one at that.

  “I have just over five hours until my flight to London departs,” Bourne said. “Triggered spark gaps—tell me what I need to know.”

  “Along with fissionable material, TSGs are among the most highly restricted items in the world,” Hytner began. “To be precise, they’re number two thousand six hundred forty-one on the government’s controlled list.”

  “So the tip that got Lindros so excited he couldn’t help going into the field himself concerned a transshipment of TSGs.”

  Hytner was back to trying to crack the cipher, so Soraya took over. “The whole thing began in South Africa. Cape Town, to be exact.”

  “Why Cape Town?” Bourne asked.

  “During the apartheid era, the country became a haven for smugglers, mostly by necessity.” Soraya spoke quickly, efficiently, but with an unmistakable detachment. “Now that South Africa is on our ‘white list,’ it’s okay for American manufacturers to export TSGs there.”

  “Then they get ‘lost,’” Hytner chimed in without lifting his head from the letters on the screen.

  “Lost is right.” Soraya nodded. “Smugglers are more difficult to eradicate than roaches. As you can imagine, there’s still a network of them operating out of Cape Town, and these days they’re highly sophisticated.”

  “And the tip came from where?” Bourne said.

  Without looking at him, Soraya passed over sheets of computer printouts. “The smugglers communicate by cell phone. They use ‘burners,’ cheap phones available in any convenience store on pay-as-you-go plans. They use them for anywhere from a day to, maybe, a week, if they can get their hands on another SIM card. Then they throw them away and use another.”

  “Virtually impossible to trace, you wouldn’t believe.” Hytner’s body was tense. He was putting all he had into breaking the cipher. “But there is a way.”

  “There’s always a way,” Bourne said.

  “Especially if your uncle works in the phone company.” Hytner shot a quick grin at Soraya.

  She maintained her icy demeanor. “Uncle Kingsley emigrated to Cape Town thirty years ago. London was too grim for him, he said. He needed a place that was still full of promise.” She shrugged. “Anyway, we got lucky. We caught a conversation regarding this particular shipment—the transcript is on the second sheet. He’s telling one of his people the cargo can’t go through the usual channels.”

  Bourne noticed Hytner looking at him curiously. “And what was special about this ‘lost’ shipment,” Bourne said, “was that it coincided with the specific threat to the U.S.”

  “That and the fact that we have the smuggler in custody,” Hytner said.

  Bourne ran his finger down the second page of the transcript. “Was it wise to bring him in? Chances are you’ll alert his customer.”

  Soraya shook her head. “Not likely. These people use a source once, then they move on.”

  “So you know who bought the TSGs.”

  “Let’s say we have a strong suspicion. That’s why Lindros went into the field himself.”

  “Have you heard of Dujja?” Hytner said.

  Bourne accessed the memory. “Dujja has been credited with at least a dozen attacks in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the most recent being last month’s bombing that killed ninety-five people at the Grand Mosque in Khanaqin, 144 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. If I remember right, it was also allegedly responsible for the assassinations of two members of the Saudi royal family, the Jordanian foreign minister, and the Iraqi chief of internal security.”

  Soraya took back the transcript. “It sounds implausible, doesn’t it, that one cadre could be responsible for so many attacks? But it’s true. One thing links them all: the Saudis. There was a secret business meeting going on in the mosque that included high-level Saudi emissaries. The Jordanian foreign minister was a personal friend of the royal family; the Iraqi security chief was a vocal supporter of the United States.”

  “I’m familiar with the classified debrief material,” Bourne said. “Those were all sophisticated, highly engineered attacks. Most of them didn’t include suicide bombers, and none of the perpetrators has been caught. Who’s the leader of Dujja?”

  Soraya put the transcript back in its folder. “His name is Fadi.”

  “Fadi. The redeemer, in Arabic,” Bourne said. “A name he must have taken.”

  “The truth is we don’t know anything else about him, not even his real name,” Hytner said sourly.

  “But we do know some things,” Bourne said. “For one, Dujja’s attacks are so well coordinated and sophisticated, it’s safe to assume that Fadi either has been educated in the West or has had considerable contact with it. For another, the cadre is unusually well armed with modern-day weaponry not normally associated with Arab or Muslim fundamentalist terror groups.”

  Soraya nodded. “We’re all over that angle. Dujja is one of the new generation of cadres that has joined forces with organized crime, drug traffickers out of South Asia and Latin America.”

  “If you ask me,” Hytner chipped in, “the reason Deputy Director Lindros got the Old Man to approve Typhon so quickly was that he told him our first directive is to find out who Fadi is, flush him out, and terminate him.” He glanced up. “Each year, Dujja’s become stronger and more influential among Muslim extremists. Our intel indicates that they’re flocking to Fadi in unprecedented numbers.”

  “Still, as of today no agency has been able to get to first base, not even us,” Soraya said.

  “But then, we’ve only recently been organized,” Hytner added.

  “Have you contacted the Saudi secret service?” Bourne asked.

  Soraya gave him a bitter laugh. “One of our informants swears the Saudi secret service is pursuing a lead on Dujja. The Saudis deny it.”

  Hytner looked up. “They also deny their oil reserves are drying up.”

  Soraya closed her files, stacked them neatly. “I know there are people in the field who call you the Chameleon because of your legendary skill at disguising yourself. But Fadi—whoever he is—is a true chameleon. Though we have corroborating intel that he not only plans the attacks but is also actively involved in many of them, w

e have no photo of him.”

  “Not even an Identi-Kit drawing,” Hytner said with evident disgust.

  Bourne frowned. “What makes you think Dujja bought the TSGs from the supplier?”

  “We know he’s holding back vital information.” Hytner pointed to the screen of his laptop. “We found this cipher on one of the buttons of his shirt. Dujja is the only terrorist cadre we know of that uses ciphers of this level of sophistication.”

  “I want to interrogate him.”

  “Soraya’s the AIC—the agent in charge,” Hytner said. “You’ll have to ask her.”

  Bourne turned to her.

  Soraya hesitated only a moment. Then she stood and gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”

  Bourne rose. “Tim, make a hard copy of the cipher, give us fifteen, then come find us.”

  Hytner glanced up, squinting as if Bourne were in a glare. “I won’t be near finished in fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes, you will.” Bourne opened the door. “At least, you’ll sell it that way.”

  The holding cells were accessed via a short, steep flight of perforated steel stairs. In stark contrast with Typhon’s light-drenched ops room, the space here was small, dark, cramped, as if the bedrock of Washington itself were reluctant to give up any more of its domain.

  Bourne stopped her at the bottom of the stairs. “Have I done something to offend you?”

  Soraya stared at him for a moment as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “His name is Hiram Cevik,” she said, pointedly ignoring Bourne’s question. “Fifty-one, married, three children. He’s of Turkish descent, moved to Ukraine when he was eighteen. He’s been in Cape Town for the last twenty-three years. Owns an import-export firm. For the most part, the business is legit, but every once in a while, it seems, Mr. Cevik gets a whole other thing going.” She shrugged. “Maybe his mistress has a taste for diamonds, maybe it’s his Internet gambling.”

  “It’s so hard to make ends meet these days,” Bourne said.

  Soraya looked like she wanted to laugh, but didn’t.

  “I rarely do things by the book,” he said. “But whatever I do, whatever I say, goes. Is that clear?”

  For a moment she stared deep into his eyes. What was she looking for? he wondered. What was the matter with her?

  “I’m familiar with your methods,” she said in an icy tone.

  Cevik was leaning against one wall of his cage, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Bourne approaching with Soraya, he blew out a cloud of smoke and said, “You the cavalry or the inquisitor?”

  Bourne watched him as Soraya unlocked the cage door.

  “Inquisitor, then.” Cevik dropped the cigarette butt and ground it beneath his heel. “I should tell you that my wife knows all about my gambling—and about my mistress.”

  “I’m not here to blackmail you.” Bourne stepped into the cage. He could feel Soraya behind him as if she were a part of him. His scalp began to tingle. She had a weapon and was prepared to use it on the prisoner before the situation got out of hand. She was a perfectionist, Bourne sensed that about her.

  Cevik came off the wall and stood with his hands at his sides, fingers slightly curled. He was tall, with the wide shoulders of a former rugby player and gold cat’s eyes. “Judging by your extreme fitness, it’s to be physical coercion, then.”

  Bourne looked around the cage, getting a feel for what it was like to be pent up in it. A flare of something half remembered, a feeling of sickness in the pit of his stomach. “That would get me nowhere.” He used the words to bring himself out of it.

  “Too true.”

  It wasn’t a boast. The simple statement of fact told him more about Cevik than an hour of vigorous interrogation. Bourne’s gaze resettled on the South African.

  “How to resolve this dilemma?” Bourne spread his hands. “You need to get out of here. I need information. It’s as simple as that.”

  Cevik let a thin laugh escape his lips. “If it were that simple, my friend, I’d be long gone.”

  “My name is Jason Bourne. You’re talking to me now. I’m neither your jailor nor your adversary.” Bourne paused. “Unless you wish it.”

  “I doubt I’d care for that,” Cevik said. “I’ve heard of you.”

  Bourne gestured with his head. “Walk with me.”

  “That’s not a good idea.” Soraya planted herself between them and the outside world.

  Bourne gave her a curt hand signal.

  She pointedly ignored him. “This is a gross breach of security.”

  “I went out of my way to warn you,” he said. “Step aside.”

  She had her cell phone to her ear as he and Cevik went past. But it was Tim Hytner she was calling, not the Old Man.

  Though it was night, the floodlights turned the lawn and its paths into silver oases amid the many-armed shadows of the leafless trees. Bourne walked beside Cevik. Soraya Moore followed five paces behind them, like a dutiful duenna, a look of disapproval on her face, a hand on her holstered gun.

  Down in the depths, Bourne had been gripped by a sudden compulsion, fired by the lick of a memory—an interrogation technique used on subjects who were particularly resistant to the standard techniques of torture and sensory deprivation. Bourne was suddenly quite certain that if Cevik tasted the open air, experienced the space after being holed up in the cage for days, it would bring home to him all he had to gain from answering Bourne’s questions truthfully. And all he had to lose.

  “Who did you sell the TSGs to?” Bourne asked.

  “I’ve already told this one behind us. I don’t know. It was just a voice on the telephone.”

  Bourne was skeptical. “Do you normally sell TSGs over the phone?”

  “For five mil, I do.”

  Believable, but was it the truth?

  “Man or woman?” Bourne said.

  “Man.”

  “Accent?”

  “British, like I told them.”

  “Do better.”

  “What, you don’t believe me?”

  “I’m asking you to think again, I’m asking you to think harder. Take a moment, then tell me what you remember.”

  “Nothing, I…” Cevik paused in the crisscross shadows of an Adams flowering crab apple. “Hang on. Maybe, just maybe, there was a hint of something else, something more exotic, maybe Eastern European.”

  “You lived for a number of years in Ukraine, didn’t you?”

  “You have me.” Cevik screwed up his face. “I want to say possibly he was Slavic. There was a touch… maybe southern Ukraine. In Odessa, on the northern Black Sea coast, where I’ve spent time, the dialect is somewhat different, you know.”

  Bourne, of course, did know, but he said nothing. In his mind, he was on a countdown to the moment when Tim Hytner would arrive with the “decoded” cipher.

  “You’re still lying to me,” Bourne said. “You must’ve seen your buyer when he picked up the TSGs.”

  “And yet I didn’t. The deal was done through a dead drop.”

  “From a voice on the phone? Come on, Cevik.”

  “It’s the truth. He gave me a specific time and a specific place. I left half the shipment and I returned an hour later for half the five mil. The next day, we completed the deal. I saw no one, and believe me when I tell you I didn’t want to.”

  Again, plausible—and a clever arrangement, Bourne thought. If it was true.

  “Human beings are born curious.”

  “That may be so,” Cevik said with a nod. “But I have no desire to die. This man… his people were watching the dead drop. They would have shot me on sight. You know that, Bourne. This situation is familiar to you.”

  Cevik shook out a cigarette, offered Bourne one, then took one himself. He lit it with a book of matches that was almost empty. Seeing the direction of Bourne’s gaze, he said, “Nothing to burn in the hole so they let me keep it.”

  Bourne heard an echo in his mind, as if a voice were speaking to him from a great distance. “That w

as then, this is now,” he said, taking the matchbook from Cevik.

  Cevik, having made no move to resist, pulled the smoke into his lungs, let it out with a soft hiss, the sound of the cars rolling by beyond the moat of grass.

  Nothing to burn in the hole. The words bounced around in Bourne’s head as if his brain were a pinball machine.

  “Tell me, Mr. Bourne, have you ever been incarcerated?”

  Nothing to burn in the hole. The sentence, once evoked, kept repeating, blocking out thought and reason.

  With a grunt almost of pain, Bourne pushed Cevik on and they resumed walking; Bourne wanted him in the light. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tim Hytner hurrying their way.

  “Do you know what it means to have your freedom taken from you?” Cevik flicked a bit of tobacco off his underlip. “All your life to live in poverty. Being poor is like watching pornography: Once you start, there’s no way out. It’s addictive, d’you see, this life without hope. Don’t you agree?”

  Bourne’s head was hurting now, each repetition of each word falling like a hammer blow on the inside of his skull. It was with extreme difficulty that he realized Cevik was merely trying to regain a measure of control. It was a basic rule of the interrogator never to answer a question. Once he did, he lost his absolute power.

  Bourne frowned. He wanted to say something; what was it? “Make no mistake. We have you where we want you.”

  “I?” Cevik’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m nothing, a conduit, that’s all. It’s my buyer you need to find. What do you want with me?”

  “We know you can lead us to the buyer.”

  “No I can’t. I already told you—”

  Hytner was approaching through inky shadow and glazed light. Why was Hytner here? Through the pounding in his head, Bourne could scarcely remember. He had it; it slipped away like a fish, then reappeared. “The cipher, Cevik. We’ve broken it.”