Page 41 of The Bourne Sanction (Jason Bourne 6)

  “You—” Hart was so enraged that she could barely speak.

  “I could say that I’d already begun to suspect that Batt was working for the NSA,” Feir said, “but that would be a lie.”

  “So you held on to it, even after I was appointed.”

  “Leverage, Director. I figured that sooner or later I’d need my Get Out of Jail Free card.”

  There was the smile that made Hart want to bury her fist in his face. With an effort, she restrained herself. “And meanwhile, you let LaValle trample all over us. Because of you I was led out of my office in handcuffs, because of you the Old Man’s legacy is a hair’s breadth from being buried.”

  “Yeah, well, these things happen. What can you do?”

  “I’ll tell you what I can do,” Hart said, signaling the agents, who grabbed Feir again. “I can tell you to go to hell. I can tell you that you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail.”

  Even then, Feir appeared unfazed. “I said I knew who the mole is, Director. Furthermore—and I believe this will be of especial interest to you—I know where he’s stationed.”

  Hart was too enraged to care. “Get him out of my sight.”

  As he was being led to the door, Feir said, “He’s inside the NSA safe house.”

  The DCI felt her heart thumping hard in her chest. Feir’s goddamn smile was not only understandable now, it was warranted.

  Thirty-three hours, twenty-six minutes from now. Icoupov’s ominous words were still ringing in Bourne’s ears when he saw a flicker of movement. He and Icoupov were standing in the foyer, the front door was still open, and a shadow had for a moment stained the opposite wall of the hallway. Someone was out there, shielded by the half-open door.

  Bourne, continuing to talk to Icoupov, took the other man by his elbow and moved him back into the living room, across the rug, toward the hallway to the bedrooms and bath. As they passed one of the windows, it exploded inward with the force of a man swinging through. Bourne whirled, the SIG Sauer he’d taken from Icoupov coming to bear on the intruder.

  “Put the SIG down,” a female voice said from behind him. He turned his head to see that the figure in the hallway—a young pale woman—was aiming a Luger at his head.

  “Leonid, what are you doing here?” Icoupov seemed apoplectic. “I gave you express orders—”

  “It’s Bourne.” Arkadin advanced through the welter of glass littering the floor. “It was Bourne who killed Mischa.”

  “Is this true?” Icoupov turned on Bourne. “You killed Mikhail Tarkanian?”

  “He left me no choice,” Bourne said.

  Devra, her Luger aimed squarely at Bourne’s head, said, “Drop the SIG. I won’t say it again.”

  Icoupov reached out toward Bourne. “I’ll take it.”

  “Stay where you are,” Arkadin ordered. His own Luger was aimed at Icoupov.

  “Leonid, what are you doing?”

  Arkadin ignored him. “Do as the lady says, Bourne. Drop the SIG.”

  Bourne did as he was told. The moment he let go of the gun, Arkadin tossed his Luger aside and leapt at Bourne. Bourne raised a forearm in time to block Arkadin’s knee, but he felt the jolt all the way up into his shoulder. They traded punishing blows, clever feints, and defensive blocks. For each move he employed, Arkadin had the perfect counter, and vice versa. When he stared into the Russian’s eyes he saw his darkest deeds reflected back at him, all the death and destruction that lay in his wake. In those implacable eyes there was a void blacker than a starless night.

  They moved across the living room as Bourne gave way, until they passed under the archway separating the living room from the rest of the apartment. In the kitchen Arkadin grabbed a cleaver, swung it at Bourne. Dodging away from the executioner’s lethal arc, Bourne reached for a wooden block that held several carving knives. Arkadin brought the cleaver down on the countertop, missing Bourne’s fingers by less than an inch. Now he blocked the way to the knives, swinging the cleaver back and forth like a scythe reaping wheat.

  Bourne was near the sink. Snatching a plate out of the dish rack, he hurled it like a Frisbee, forcing Arkadin to duck out of the way. As the plate shattered against the wall behind Arkadin, Bourne withdrew a carving knife like a sword out of its scabbard. Steel clashed against steel, until Bourne used the knife to stab directly at Arkadin’s stomach. Arkadin brought the cleaver down precisely at the place where Bourne was gripping the knife, and he had to let go. The knife rang as it hit the floor, then Arkadin rushed Bourne, and the two closed together.

  Bourne managed to keep the cleaver away, and at such close quarters it was impossible to swing it back and forth. Realizing it had become a liability, Arkadin dropped it.

  For three long minutes they were locked together in a kind of double death grip. Bloody and bruised, neither managed to gain the upper hand. Bourne had never encountered someone of Arkadin’s physical and mental skill, someone who was so much like him. Fighting Arkadin was like fighting a mirror image of himself, one he didn’t care for. He felt as if he stood on the precipice of something terrible, a chasm filled with endless dread, where no life could survive. He felt Arkadin had reached out to pull him into this abyss, as if to show him the desolation that lurked behind his own eyes, the grisly image of his forgotten past reflected back at him.

  With a supreme effort Bourne broke Arkadin’s hold, slammed his fist against the Russian’s ear. Arkadin recoiled back against a column, and Bourne sprinted out of the kitchen, down the hall. As he did so, he heard the unmistakable sound of someone racking the slide, and he flung himself headlong into the main bedroom. A shot splintered the wooden door frame just over his head.

  Scrambling up, he headed straight for Kirsch’s closet, even as he heard Arkadin shout to the pale woman to hold her fire. Pushing aside a rack of clothes on hangers, Bourne scrabbled at the plywood panel in the rear wall of the closet, searching for the clips Kirsch had described to him at the museum. Just as he heard Arkadin rush into the bedroom, he turned the clips, removed the panel, and, crouching almost double, stepped through into a world filled to overflowing with shadow.

  When Devra turned around after her attempt to wound Bourne, she found herself looking at the muzzle of the SIG Sauer that Icoupov had retrieved from the floor.

  “You fool,” Icoupov said, “you and your boyfriend are going to fuck everything up.”

  “What Leonid is doing is his own business,” she said.

  “That’s the nature of the mistake,” Icoupov said. “Leonid has no business of his own. Everything he is he owes to me.”

  She stepped out of the shadows of the hallway into the living room. The Luger at her hip was pointed at Icoupov. “He’s quits with you,” she said. “His servitude is done.”

  Icoupov laughed. “Is that what he told you?”

  “It’s what I told him.”

  “Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

  They circled each other, wary of the slightest move. Even so, Devra managed an icy smile. “He’s changed since he left Moscow. He’s a different person.”

  Icoupov made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “The first thing you need to get through your head is that Leonid is incapable of change. I know this better than anyone because I spent so many years trying to make him a better person. I failed. Everyone who tried failed, and do you know why? Because Leonid isn’t whole. Somewhere in the days and nights of Nizhny Tagil he was fractured. All the czar’s horses and all the czar’s men can’t put him back together again; the pieces no longer fit.” He gestured with the SIG Sauer’s barrel. “Get out now, get out while you can, otherwise, I promise you he’ll kill you like he killed all the others who tried to get close to him.”

  “How deluded you are!” Devra spat. “You’re like all your kind, corrupted by power. You’ve spent so many years removed from life on the streets you’ve created your own reality, one that moves only to the wave of your own hand.” She took a step toward him, which prompted a tense response f

rom him. “Think you can kill me before I kill you? I wouldn’t count on it.” She tossed her head. “Anyway, you have more to lose than I do. I was already half dead when Leonid found me.”

  “Ah, I see it now,” Icoupov nodded, “he’s saved you from yourself, he’s saved you from the streets, is that it?”

  “Leonid is my protector.”

  “God in heaven, talk about deluded!”

  Devra’s icy smile widened. “One of us is fatally mistaken. It remains to be seen which one.”

  The room is filled with mannequins,” Egon Kirsch had said when he’d described his studio to Bourne. “I keep the light out with blackout shades because these mannequins are my creation. I built them from the ground up, so to speak. They’re my companions, you might say, as well as my creations. In that sense, they can see or, if you like, I believe that they have the gift of sight, and what creature can look upon his creator without going mad or blind, or both?”

  With the map of the room in his mind, Bourne crept through the studio, avoiding the mannequins so as not to make noise or, as Kirsch might have said, so as not to disturb the process of their birth.

  “You think I’m insane,” he’d said to Bourne in the museum. “Not that it matters. To all artists—successful or not!—their creations are alive. I’m no different. It’s simply that after struggling for years to bring abstractions to life, I’ve given my work human form.”

  Hearing a sound, Bourne froze for a moment, then peered around a mannequin’s thigh. His eyes had adjusted to the extreme gloom, and he could see movement: Arkadin had found the panel and had come through into the studio after him.

  Bourne liked his chances here far better than in Kirsch’s apartment. He knew the layout, the darkness would help him, and if he struck quickly, he’d have the advantage of being able to see where Arkadin couldn’t.

  With that strategy in mind, he moved out from behind the mannequin, picked his way toward the Russian. The studio was like a minefield. There were three mannequins between him and Arkadin, all set at different angles and poses: One was sitting, holding a small painting as if reading a book; another was standing spread-legged, in a classic shooter’s pose; the third was running, leaning forward, as if stretching to cross the finish line.

  Bourne moved around the runner. Arkadin was crouched down on his hams, wisely staying in one place until his eyes adjusted. It was precisely what Bourne had done when he’d entered the studio moments before.

  Once again Bourne was struck by the eerie mirror image that Arkadin represented. There was no pleasure and a great deal of anxiety at the most primitive level in watching yourself do his best to find you and kill you.

  Picking up his pace, Bourne negotiated the space to where the mannequin sat, reading his painting. Keenly aware that he was running out of time, Bourne moved stealthily abreast of the shooter. Just as he was about to lunge at Arkadin, his cell phone buzzed, the screen lighting up with Moira’s number.

  With a silent curse, Bourne sprang. Arkadin, alert for even the tiniest anomaly, turned defensively toward the sound, and Bourne was met with a solid wall of muscle, behind which was a murderous will of fiery intensity. Arkadin swung; Bourne slid backward, between the legs of the shooter mannequin. As Arkadin came after him he ran right into the mannequin’s hips. Recoiling with a curse, he swung at the mannequin. The blade struck the acrylic skin and lodged in the sheet metal underneath. Bourne kicked out while Arkadin was trying to pull the blade free, and made contact with the left side of his chest. Arkadin tried to roll away. Bourne jammed his shoulder against the back of the shooter. It was extremely heavy, he put all of his strength into it, and the mannequin tipped over, trapping Arkadin underneath.

  “Your friend gave me no choice,” Bourne said. “He would’ve killed me if I hadn’t stopped him. He was too far away; I had to throw the knife.”

  A sound like the crackle of a fire came from Arkadin. It took a moment for Bourne to realize it was laughter. “I’ll make you a bet, Bourne. Before he died, I bet Mischa said you were a dead man.”

  Bourne was about to answer him when he saw the dim glint of a SIG Sauer Mosquito in Arkadin’s hand. He ducked just before the .22 bullet whizzed over his head.

  “He was right.”

  Bourne twisted away, dodging around the other mannequins, using them as cover even as Arkadin squeezed off three more rounds. Plaster, wood, and acrylic shattered near Bourne’s left shoulder and ear before he dived behind Kirsch’s worktable. Behind him, he could hear Arkadin’s grunts combined with the screech of metal as he worked to free himself from the fallen shooter.

  Bourne knew from Kirsch’s description that the front door was to the left. Scrambling up, he dashed around the corner as Arkadin fired another shot. A chunk of plaster and lath disintegrated where the .22 impacted the corner. Reaching the door, Bourne unlocked it, pulled it open, and sprinted out into the hallway. The open door to Kirsch’s apartment loomed to his left.

  No good can come of us training guns on each other,” Icoupov said. “Let’s try to reason through this situation rationally.”

  “That’s your problem,” Devra said. “Life isn’t rational; it’s fucked-up chaos. It’s part of the delusion; power makes you think you can control everything. But you can’t, no one can.”

  “You and Leonid think you know what you’re doing, but you’re wrong. No one operates in a vacuum. If you kill Bourne it will have terrible repercussions.”

  “Repercussions for you, not for us. This is what power does: You think in shortcuts. Expediency, political opportunities, corruption without end.”

  It was at that moment they both heard the gunshots, but only Devra knew they came from Arkadin’s Mosquito. She could sense Icoupov’s finger tighten around the SIG’s trigger, and she went into a semi-crouch because she knew if Bourne appeared rather than Arkadin she would shoot him dead.

  The situation had reached a boiling point, and Icoupov was clearly worried. “Devra, I beg you to reconsider. Leonid doesn’t know the whole picture. I need Bourne alive. What he did to Mischa was despicable, but personal feelings have no place in this equation. So much planning, so much spilled blood will come to nothing if Leonid kills Bourne. You must let me stop it; I’ll give you anything—anything you want.”

  “Do you think you can buy me? Money means nothing to me. What I want is Leonid,” Devra said just as Bourne appeared through the front doorway.

  Devra and Icoupov both turned. Devra screamed because she knew, or she thought she knew, that Arkadin was dead, and so she redirected the Luger from Icoupov to Bourne.

  Bourne ducked back into the hallway and she fired shot after shot at him as she walked toward the door. Because her focus was entirely concentrated on Bourne, she took her eyes off Icoupov and so missed the crucial movement as he swung the SIG in her direction.

  “I warned you,” he said as he shot her in the chest.

  She fell onto her back.

  “Why didn’t you listen?” Icoupov said as he shot her again.

  Devra made a little sound as her body arched up. Icoupov stood over her.

  “How could you let yourself be seduced by such a monster?” he said.

  Devra stared up at him with red-rimmed eyes. Blood pumped out of her with every labored beat of her heart. “That’s exactly what I asked him about you.” Each ragged breath filled her with indescribable pain. “He’s not a monster, but if he were you’d be so much worse.”

  Her hand twitched. Icoupov, caught up in her words, paid no attention until the bullet she fired from her Luger struck his right shoulder. He spun back against the wall. The pain caused him to drop the SIG. Seeing her struggling to fire again, he turned and ran out of the apartment, fleeing down the stairwell and out onto the street.

  Thirty-Nine

  WILLARD, relaxing in the steward’s lounge adjacent to the Library of the NSA safe house, was enjoying his sweet and milky midmorning cup of coffee while reading The Washington Post when his cell phone buzzed. He checked

it, saw that it was from his son, Oren. Of course it wasn’t actually from Oren, but Willard was the only one who knew that.

  He put down the paper, watched as the photo appeared on the phone’s screen. It was of two people standing in front of a rural church, its steeple rising up into the top margin of the photo. He had no idea who the people were or where they were, but these things were irrelevant. There were six ciphers in his head; this photo told him which one to use. The two figures plus the steeple meant he was to use cipher three. If, for instance, the two people were in front of an arch, he’d subtract one from two, instead of adding to it. There were other visual cues. A brick building meant divide the number of figures by two; a bridge, multiply by two; and so on.

  Willard deleted the photo from his phone, then picked up the third section of the Post and began to read the first story on page three. Starting with the third word, he began to decipher the message that was his call to action. As he moved through the article, substituting certain letters for others as the protocol dictated, he felt a profound stirring inside him. He had been the Old Man’s eyes and ears inside the NSA for three decades, and the Old Man’s sudden death last year had saddened him deeply. Then he had witnessed Luther LaValle’s latest run at CI and had waited for his phone to ring, but for months his desire to see another photo fill his screen had been inexplicably unfulfilled. He simply couldn’t understand why the new DCI wasn’t making use of him. Had he fallen between the cracks; did Veronica Hart not know he existed? It certainly seemed that way, especially after LaValle had trapped Soraya Moore and her compatriot, who was still incarcerated belowdecks, as Willard privately called the rendition cells in the basement. He’d done what he could for the young man named Tyrone, though God knows it was little enough. Yet he knew that even the smallest sign of hope—the knowledge that you weren’t alone—was enough to reinvigorate a stalwart heart, and if he was any judge of character, Tyrone had a stalwart heart.