Page 43 of The Bourne Sanction (Jason Bourne 6)

  When the door opened, Willard froze. He was on his hands and knees hidden from the doorway by the desk’s skirt. He heard voices, one of them LaValle’s, and held his breath.

  “There’s nothing to it,” LaValle said. “E-mail me the figures and after I’m done with the Moore woman I’ll check them.”

  “Good deal,” Patrick, one of LaValle’s aides said, “but you’d better get back to the Library, the Moore woman is kicking up a fuss.”

  LaValle cursed. Willard heard him cross to the desk, shuffle some papers. Perhaps he was looking for a file. LaValle grunted in satisfaction, walked back across the office, and closed the door after him. It was only when Willard heard the grate of the key in the lock that he exhaled.

  He fired up the camera, praying that the images hadn’t been deleted, and there they were, one after another, evidence that would damn Luther LaValle and his entire NSA administration. Using both the camera and his cell phone, he linked them through the wireless Bluetooth protocol, then transferred the images to his cell. Once that was completed, he navigated to his son’s phone number—which wasn’t his son’s number, though if anyone called it a young man who had standing instructions to pass as his son would answer—and sent the photos in one long burst. Sending them one by one via separate calls would surely cause a red flag on the security server.

  At last, Willard sat back and took a deep breath. It was done; the photos were now in the hands of CI, where they’d do the most good, or—if you were Luther LaValle—the most damage. Checking his watch, he pocketed the camera, relatched the door to the hidden compartment, and scrambled out from under the desk.

  Four minutes later, his hair freshly combed, his uniform brushed down, and looking very smart, indeed, he placed a Ceylon tea in front of Soraya Moore and a single-malt scotch in front of Luther LaValle. Ms. Moore thanked him; LaValle, staring at her, ignored him as usual.

  Moira hadn’t seen him, and Bourne couldn’t call out to her because in this maelstrom of people his voice wouldn’t carry. Blocked in his forward motion, he edged his way back to the periphery, moving to his left in order to circle around to her. He tried her cell again, but she either couldn’t hear it or wasn’t answering.

  It was as he was disengaging the line that he saw the NSA agents. They were moving in concert toward the center of the crowd, and he could only assume that there were others in a tightening circle within which they meant to trap him. They hadn’t spotted him yet, but Moira was close to one of the pair in Bourne’s view. There was no way to get to her without them spotting him. Nevertheless, he continued to circle through the fringes of the crowd, which had grown so large that many of the young people were shoving one another as they shouted their slogans.

  Bourne pushed on, although it seemed to him at a slower and slower pace, as if he were in a dream where the laws of physics were nonexistent. He needed to get to Moira without the agents seeing him; it was dangerous for her to be looking for him with NSA infiltrating the crowd. Far better for him to get to her first so he could control both their movements.

  Finally, as he neared the NSA agents, he could see the reason for the sudden rancor of the crowd. The shoving was being precipitated by a large group of skinheads, some wielding brass knuckles or baseball bats. They had swastikas tattooed on their bulging arms, and when they began to swing at the chanting university students, Bourne made a run for Moira. But as he lunged for her, one of the agents elbowed a skinhead aside and, as he did so, caught a glimpse of Bourne. He whirled, his lips moving as he spoke urgently into the earpiece with which he was wirelessly connected with the other members of what Bourne assumed was an execution team.

  He grabbed Moira, but the agent had hold of him, and he began to jerk Bourne back toward him, as if to detain him long enough for the other members of the team to reach them. Bourne struck him flush on the chin with the heel of his hand. The agent’s head snapped back, and he collapsed into a group of skinheads, who thought he was attacking them and started beating him.

  “Jason, what the hell happened to you?” Moira said as she and Bourne turned, making their way through the throng. “Where’s Soraya?”

  “She was never here,” Bourne said. “This is another NSA trap.”

  It would have been best to keep to where the garden was most crowded, but that would put them in the center of the trap. Bourne led them around the crowd, hoping to emerge in a place where the agents wouldn’t spot them, but now he saw three more outside the mass of the demonstration and knew retreat was impossible. Instead he reversed course, drawing Moira farther into the surging mass of demonstrators.

  “What are you doing?” Moira said. “Aren’t we headed straight into the trap?”

  “Trust me.” Instinctively he headed toward one of the flashpoints where the skinheads were clashing with the university students.

  They reached the edge of the escalating fight between the two groups of teens. Out of the corner of his eye Bourne saw an NSA agent struggling through the same mass of people. Bourne tried to alter their course, but their way was blocked, and a resurgent wave of students pushed them like flotsam at the tide line. Feeling the new influx of people, the agent turned to fight against it and ran right into Moira.

  He barked Bourne’s name into the microphone in his earpiece, and Bourne slammed a shoe into the side of his knee. The agent faltered, but managed to counter the chop Bourne directed at his shoulder blade. The agent drew a handgun, and Bourne snatched a baseball bat from a skinhead’s grip, struck the agent so hard on the back of his hands that he dropped the handgun.

  Then, from behind him, Bourne heard Moira say, “Jason, they’re coming!”

  The trap was about to snap shut on both of them.

  Forty-One

  LUTHER LAVALLE waited on tenterhooks for the call from his extraction team leader in Munich. He sat in his customary chair facing the window that looked out over the rolling lawns to the left of the wide gravel drive, which wound through the elms and oaks lining it like sentinels. Having verbally put her in her place after returning from his office, he contrived to ignore Soraya Moore and Willard who, after the second time, had given up asking him if he wanted his single-malt scotch refreshed. He didn’t want his single-malt scotch refreshed and he didn’t want to hear another word from the Moore woman. What he wanted was his cell phone to ring, for his team leader to tell him that Jason Bourne was in custody. That’s all he required of this day; he didn’t think it was too much to ask.

  Nevertheless, it was true that his nerves were pulled tighter than a drawn bowstring. He found himself wanting to scream, to punch someone; he’d almost launched himself like a missile at Willard when the steward had approached him the last time—he was so damn servile. Beside him, the Moore woman sat, one leg crossed over her knee, sipping her damnable Ceylon tea. How could she be so calm!

  He reached over, slapped the cup and saucer out of her hands. They bounced on the thick carpet, along with what was left of the espresso, but they didn’t break. He jumped up, stomped the china beneath his heel until it cracked and cracked again. Aware of Soraya staring up at him, he snapped, “What? What are you looking at?”

  His cell phone buzzed and he snatched it off the table. His heart lifted, a smile of triumph wreathed his face. But it was a guard at the front gate, not the leader of his extraction team.

  “Sir, I’m sorry to bother you,” the guard said, “but the director of Central Intelligence is here.”

  “What?” LaValle fairly shouted his response. He was flooded with bitter disappointment. “Keep her the fuck out!”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir.”

  “Of course it’s possible.” He moved to the window. “I’m giving you a direct order!”

  “She’s with a contingent of federal marshals,” the guard said. “They’re already on their way to the main house.”

  It was true, LaValle could see the convoy making its way up the drive. He stood, speechless with confusion and fury. How dare the D

CI invade his private sanctuary! He’d have her in prison for this outrage!

  He started, feeling someone standing next to him. It was Soraya Moore. Her wide lips were curled in an enigmatic smile.

  Then she turned to him and said, “I do believe it’s the end of days.”

  The maelstrom closed around Bourne and Moira. What had once been a simple demonstration was now a full-blown melee. He heard screams and shouts, hurled invective, and then, under it all, the familiar high-low wail of police sirens approaching from several different directions. Bourne was quite certain the NSA hit squad had no desire to run afoul of the Munich police; it was therefore running out of time. The agent near Bourne heard the sirens, too, and with his hands clearly still half numb from the bat grabbed Moira around the throat.

  “Drop the bat and come with me, Bourne,” he said against the rising tide of screams and shouts, “or so help me I’ll break her neck like a twig.”

  Bourne dropped the bat but, as he did so, Moira bit into the agent’s hand. Bourne drove his fist into the soft spot just below his sternum then, taking hold of his wrist, he turned over the arm at an awkward angle, and with a sharp blow broke the agent’s elbow. The agent groaned, went to his knees.

  Bourne dug out his passport and earbud, threw the passport to Moira as he fitted the electronic bud into his ear canal.

  “Name,” he said.

  Moira already had the wallet open. “William K. Saunders.”

  “This is Saunders,” Bourne said, addressing the wireless network. “Bourne and the girl are getting away. They’re heading north by northwest past the pagoda.”

  Then he took her hand. “Biting his hand,” he said as they stepped over the fallen agent. “That was quite a professional move.”

  She laughed. “It did the trick, didn’t it?”

  They made their way through the mob, heading southeast. Behind them, the NSA agents were shoving their way toward the opposite side of the mass of people. Ahead, a corps of uniformed policemen outfitted in riot gear were trotting along the path, semi-automatics at the ready. They passed Bourne and Moira without a second look.

  Moira glanced at her watch. “Let’s get to my car as quickly as possible. We have a plane to catch.”

  Don’t give up. Those three words Tyrone had found in his oatmeal were enough to sustain him. Kendall never came back, nor did any other interrogator. In fact, his meals came at regular intervals, the trays filled with real food, which was a blessing because he didn’t think he could ever get oatmeal down again.

  The periods when the black hood was taken off seemed to him longer and longer in duration, but his sense of time had been shot, so he didn’t really know whether or not that was true. In any case, he’d used those periods to walk, do sit-ups, push-ups, and squats, anything to relieve the terrible, bone-deep aching of his arms, shoulders, and neck.

  Don’t give up. That message might just as well have read You’re not alone or Have faith, so rich were those words, like a millionaire’s cache. When he read them he knew both that Soraya hadn’t abandoned him and that something inside the building, someone who had access to the basement, was on his side. And that was the moment when the revelation struck him, as if, if he remembered his Bible correctly, he were Paul on the road to Damascus, converted by God’s light.

  Someone is on my side—not the side of the old Tyrone, who roamed his hood with perfect wrath and retribution, not the Tyrone who’d been saved from life in the gutter by Deron, not even the Tyrone who’d been awed by Soraya. No, once he spontaneously thought Someone is on my side, he realized that my side meant CI. He had not only moved out of the hood forever, but also stepped out from under Soraya’s beautiful shadow. He was his own man now; he’d found his own calling, not as Deron’s protector, or his disciple, not as Soraya’s adoring assistant. CI was where he wanted to be, in the service of making a difference. His world was no longer defined by himself on one side and the Man on the other. He was no longer fighting what he was becoming.

  He looked up. Now to get out of here. But how? His best choice was to try to find a way to communicate with whoever had sent the note. He considered a moment. The note had been hidden in his food, so the logical answer would be to write a note of his own and somehow hide it in his leftovers. Of course, there was no way to be sure that person would find the note, or even know it was there, but it was his only shot and he was determined to take it.

  He was looking around for something to use to write when the clanging of the door brought him up short. He turned to face it as it opened. Had Kendall returned for more sadistic playtime? Had the real torturer arrived? He took a fearful glance over his shoulder at the waterboarding tank and his blood turned cold. Then he turned back and saw Soraya standing in the doorway. She was grinning from ear to ear.

  “God,” she said, “it’s good to see you!”

  How nice to see you again,” Veronica Hart said, “especially under these circumstances.”

  Luther LaValle had come away from the window; he was standing when the DCI, flanked by federal marshals and a contingent of CI agents, entered the Library. Everyone else in the Library at the time goggled, then at the behest of the marshals beat a hasty retreat. Now he sat ramrod-straight in his chair, facing Hart.

  “How dare you,” LaValle said now. “This intolerable behavior won’t go unpunished. As soon as I inform Secretary of Defense Halliday of your criminal breach of protocol—”

  Hart fanned out the photos of the rendition cells in the basement. “You’re right, Mr. LaValle, this intolerable behavior won’t go unpunished, but I believe it will be Secretary of Defense Halliday who’ll be leading the charge to punish you for your criminal protocols.”

  “I do what I do in the defense of my country,” LaValle said stiffly. “When a country is at war extraordinary actions must be undertaken in order to safeguard its borders. It’s you and people like you, with your weak-willed leftist leanings, that are to blame, not me.” He was livid, his cheeks aflame. “I’m the patriot here. You—you’re just an obstructionist. This country will crack and fall if people like you are left to run it. I’m America’s only salvation.”

  “Sit down,” Hart said quietly but firmly, “before one of my ‘leftist’ people knocks you down.”

  LaValle glared at her for a moment, then slowly sank into the chair.

  “Nice to be living in your own private world where you make the rules and you don’t give a shit about reality.”

  “I’m not sorry for what I did. If you’re expecting remorse, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “Frankly,” Hart said, “I’m not expecting anything out of you until after you’re waterboarded.” She waited until all the blood had drained from his face, before she added, “That would be one solution—your solution—but it isn’t mine.” She shuffled the photos back into their envelope.

  “Who’s seen those?” LaValle asked.

  The DCI saw him wince when she said, “Everyone who needs to see them.”

  “Well, then.” He was unbowed, unrepentant. “It’s over.”

  Hart looked past him to the front of the Library. “Not quite yet.” She nodded. “Here come Soraya and Tyrone.”

  Semion Icoupov sat on the stoop of a building not far from where the shooting had taken place. His greatcoat hid the blood that had pooled inside it, so he didn’t draw a crowd, just a curious glance or two from pedestrians hurrying by. He felt dizzy and nauseated, no doubt from shock and loss of blood, which meant he wasn’t thinking clearly. He looked around with bloodshot eyes. Where was the car that had brought him here? He needed to get out of here before Arkadin emerged from the building and spotted him. He’d taken a tiger from the wild and had tried to domesticate him, a historic mistake by any measure. How many times had it been attempted before with always the same result? Tigers weren’t meant to be domesticated; neither was Arkadin. He was what he was, and would never be anything else: a killing machine of almost preternatural abilities. Icoupov had recognized the tal

ent and, greedily, had tried to harness it to his own needs. Now the tiger had turned on him; he’d had a premonition that he would die in Munich, now he knew why, now he knew how.

  Looking back toward Egon Kirsch’s apartment building, he felt a sudden rush of fear, as if at any moment death would emerge from it, stalking him down the street. He tried to pull himself together, tried to rise to his feet, but a horrific pain shot through him, his knees buckled, and he collapsed back onto the cold stone.

  More people passed, now ignoring him altogether. Cars rolled by. The sky came down, the day darkened as if covered with a shroud. A sudden gust of wind brought the onset of rain, hard as sleet. He ducked his head between his shoulders, shivered mightily.

  And then he heard his name shouted and, turning his head, saw the nightmare figure of Leonid Danilovich Arkadin coming down the steps of Kirsch’s building. Now more highly motivated, Icoupov once again tried to get up. He groaned as he gained his feet, but tottered there uncertainly as Arkadin began to run toward him.

  At that moment, a black Mercedes sedan pulled up to the sidewalk. The driver hurried out and, taking hold of Icoupov, half carried him across the pavement. Icoupov struggled, but to no avail; he was weak with lost blood, and growing weaker by the moment. The driver opened the rear door, bundled him into the backseat. He pulled an HK 1911 .45 and with it warned Arkadin away, then he hustled back around the front of the Mercedes, slid behind the wheel, and took off.

  Icoupov, slumped in the near corner of the backseat, made rhythmic grunts of pain like puffs of smoke from a steam locomotive. He was aware of the soft rocking of the shocks as the car sped through the Munich streets. More slowly came the realization that he wasn’t alone in the backseat. He blinked heavily, trying to clear his vision.

  “Hello, Semion,” a familiar voice said.

  And then Icoupov’s vision cleared. “You!”

  “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, hasn’t it?” Dominic Specter said.