Page 19 of The Bourne Deception (Jason Bourne 7)

  “I’m afraid not,” Hart said.

  “Noah—one of Mr. Perlis’s people—killed your friend, making it look like an accident,” Moira said in a rush of emotion. Ignoring Hart’s warning glare, she continued: “Mr. Perlis is a dangerous man working for a dangerous organization.”

  “I—” Bamber ran a hand distractedly through his hair. “Shit, I don’t know what to believe.” He looked from one of them to the other. “Can I see Steve’s body?”

  Hart nodded. “That can be arranged, as soon as we’re through here.”

  “Ah.” Bamber gave her a rueful smile. “Like a reward, is that it?”

  Hart said nothing.

  He nodded in capitulation. “Okay, how can I help you?”

  “I don’t know if you can,” Hart said with a significant glance at Moira. “Because if you could, Mr. Perlis wouldn’t have left you alive.”

  For the first time Bamber looked truly alarmed. “What the hell is this?” he said with understandable indignation. “Steve and I have been close friends since college, that’s it.”

  Ever since Bamber had appeared Moira had been wondering about this aging jock’s decades-long friendship with Steve Stevenson, a man who didn’t know a softball from a football and, furthermore, didn’t care. Now something Bamber just said caused a number of small anomalies to click into place.

  “I think there’s another reason Noah felt confident in leaving you with a warning, Mr. Bamber,” she said, “am I right?”

  Bamber frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What would frighten you so much that Noah could be assured that you wouldn’t talk?”

  He stood up abruptly. “I’ve had just about enough of this badgering.”

  “Sit back down, Mr. Bamber,” Hart said.

  “You and Undersecretary Stevenson were more than roommates at college,” Moira pressed on. “Just as you were more than good friends. Isn’t that right?”

  Bamber sat down as if all the strength had gone out of his legs. “I want protection from Noah and his people.”

  “You have it,” Hart said.

  He looked at her steadily. “I’m not kidding.”

  Pulling out her cell, she punched in a number. “Tommy,” she said into the phone, “I need a security detail in double-quick time.” She gave her assistant the address of the health club. “And Tommy, not a word of this to anyone outside the detail, is that clear? Good.”

  She tucked away her phone, said to Bamber, “Neither am I.”

  “Good.” He sighed in relief. Then, turning to Moira, he smiled bleakly. “You’re not wrong about Steve and me, and Noah knew neither of us could survive if the true nature of our relationship was made public.”

  Moira felt the breath rush out of her. “You called him Noah. Do you mean to tell us you know him?”

  “In a way, I work for him. That’s the other, more important, reason he couldn’t touch me. You see, I created a custom software program for him. It’s still got some minor bugs and I’m the only one who can work them out.”

  “Funny,” Hart said, “you don’t look like a tech geek.”

  “Yeah, well, Steve used to say that was one of my charms. I never looked anything like what I really am.”

  “What does this software program do?” Moira said.

  “It’s a highly sophisticated statistical analysis program that can take into account millions of factors. What he’s doing with it I don’t know. He made sure I was locked out of that side of it, that was part of our agreement, the reason I asked for and got a higher fee.”

  “But you said you’re working on fixes.”

  “That’s right,” Bamber said, nodding, “but it’s necessary that I work on a clean copy of the program. When I’m finished I electronically transfer it to Noah’s laptop. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.”

  “Let’s hear your guess,” Moira said.

  He sighed again. “Okay, here’s my best shot. The level of complexity of the program makes it almost a sure bet that he’s using it on a real-world basis.”

  “Translation, please.”

  “There are lab scenarios and real-world scenarios,” Bamber said. “As you can imagine, anything that tries to figure out what would happen during certain real-life situations has to be incredibly complex because of all the factors involved.”

  “Millions of factors.”

  He nodded. “Which my program provides.”

  A possibility hit Moira between the eyes and for a moment she sat back, dazzled. Then she said, “Have you given this program a name?”

  “In fact, I did.” Bamber seemed a bit embarrassed. “It’s a private joke between Steve and me.” His use of the present tense brought the news of his friend and lover’s death back to him, and he stopped, put his head down, moaning low in his throat, “Jesus, Jesus, Steve.”

  Moira waited a moment, then cleared her throat. “Mr. Bamber, we’re truly sorry for your loss. I knew Undersecretary Stevenson, I did business with him. He always helped me, even if it meant going out on a limb.”

  Bamber’s head came up, his eyes red-rimmed. “Yeah, that was Steve, all right.”

  “The name you gave the program you created for Noah Perlis?”

  “Oh, that. It’s nothing, as I said, a joke because Steve and I both like—liked—Javier—”

  “Bardem,” Moira said.

  Bamber looked surprised. “Yes, how did you know?”

  And Moira thought, Pinprickbardem.

  16

  THE MUSEO TAURINO was located inside the Maestranza corrida, and this was where Bourne told Tracy to take him. They had just enough time to change direction within the crowd before the officers entered the throng in the vestibule. Two of them headed directly for the bullring itself. From their positions on either side of the glass doors, the remaining pair began to scan the crowd for their suspect.

  The museum was closed today, the interior door shuttered. Bourne, leaning against the door, used a paper clip Tracy found at the bottom of her handbag to pick the lock, and they slipped inside, closing the door behind them. The stuffed heads of all the great bulls killed in this corrida stared down at them with glass eyes. They passed glass cases containing the splendid costumes worn by the famous matadors going back to the seventeenth century, when Maestranza was built. The entire history of the corrida was on display in these musty rooms.

  Bourne was uninterested in any of the flamboyant displays; he was looking for the utility closet. It was in the rear of the museum, beside a little-used room. Inside, he had Tracy dig out cleaning fluid, which he had her apply to the wound down his back. The searing pain took his breath away and, with it, a full sense of consciousness.

  He awoke to Tracy’s grip on his shoulder. She was shaking him, which made his head hurt even more.

  “Wake up!” she said urgently. “You’re in worse shape than you let on. I’ve got to get you out of here.”

  He nodded; the words were hazy, but the gist hit home. Together they staggered back through the museum to the separate entrance that led out onto the street around the circle from the bullring’s main entrance. Tracy unlocked the door and poked her head outside. When she nodded, he emerged into the semi-darkness.

  She must have used her cell to call for a taxi because the next thing he knew she was maneuvering him into a backseat, leaning forward as she slid in beside him to give an address to the driver.

  As they took off, she turned and peered out the rear window. “The police are crawling all over the Maestranza,” she said. “Whatever you did has sent them into a frenzy.”

  But Bourne didn’t hear her; he was already passed out.

  Soraya and Amun Chalthoum arrived in Al Ghardaqah just before noon. Not that many years before, it had been nothing more than a modest fishing village, but a combination of Egyptian initiative and foreign investment had turned it into the leading Red Sea resort. The hub of the town was El Dahar, the oldest of the three sections, home to the tra

ditional villas and bazaar. As was the case with most Egyptian coastal towns, Al Ghardaqah did not venture far inland, but rather clung to the shore of the Red Sea as if for dear life. The Sekalla district was more modern, made ugly by the proliferation of cheap hotels. El Korra Road was prettier, filled with upscale hotels, lush plantings, lavish fountains, and walled private compounds owned by Russian moguls with nothing better to do with their easy money.

  They hit the fishermen first, what was left of them, anyway—time and the tourist business had decimated their ranks. They were old men now, skin wrinkled and brown as well-worn leather, their eyes paled by the sun, their work-hardened hands like boards, gnarly with outsize knuckles from decades in seawater. Their sons had abandoned them to work in air-conditioned offices or in jets that flew high above, leaving their homeland far behind. They were the last of their line and so an insular lot, their suspicions heightened by sweet-talking Egyptians taking their launching sites away from them to accommodate more and more Jet Skis and Sea-Doos. Their innate fear of Chalthoum and his al Mokhabarat manifested itself in cold hostility. After all, they must have reasoned, having lost everything, what more did they have to lose?

  On the other hand, they were charmed by Soraya. They adored the soft way she spoke to them even while they admired her beautiful face and shapely figure. For her they would answer questions, although they insisted that it would be impossible for anyone outside their close-knit circle to pose as a native fisherman without their knowledge. They knew by sight every boat and ship that plied the local waters, and they assured her that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred in their recent collective memory.

  “But there are the dive companies,” one grizzled seaman told them. His hands, as they mended his nets, were as big as his head. He spat to one side to show his displeasure. “Who knows who their clients are? And as for their staffs, well, they seem to change from week to week, so no one can keep track of them, let alone note their comings and goings.”

  Soraya and Chalthoum divided up the list of twenty-five dive firms the fishermen gave them, setting out for different ends of the city, agreeing to meet at a carpet shop in the El Dahar bazaar whose owner was a good friend of Amun’s.

  Soraya went down to the sea, visiting eight of the dive companies, one by one, crossing them off her list as she went. With each she boarded their boats, interviewed the skippers and crew, looked at the customer logbooks for the past three weeks. Sometimes, she had to wait for the boats to return. Other times, the owner was kind enough to ferry her out to the dive sites. After four hours of frustrating work asking the same questions and getting the same answers, she was faced with the reality: This was an impossible task. It was like looking for a needle in an endless line of haystacks. Even if the terrorists had used this method to enter Egypt, there was no assurance that the dive operators would know. And how in the world would they have explained a crate large enough to house the Kowsar 3? Once again, she was plagued with doubts about Amun’s story, with a dread that he had been involved in the downing of the airliner.

  What am I doing here? she thought. What if Amun and al Mokhabarat are the real culprits?

  Despairing, she decided to can the entire enterprise after she was through interviewing the personnel at the ninth dive shop. She was ferried out to its boat by a grizzled Egyptian who constantly spat over the side. It was exceptionally hot, the sun beating down on her head; the only breath of wind came from the movement of the boat through the listless air. Even through her sunglasses, everything appeared washed out in the glare. The brine of the sea filled her nostrils, heady and mineral. The repetition had sapped her of keen interest, otherwise she would have marked the young man with the tousled dirty-blond hair edging away from her as she was introduced by the dive shop owner. She began her interviews, asking the same questions: Have you noticed any out-of-place faces in the last three weeks? Any group of seeming Egyptians who came from another boat and who went ashore the same day? Any unusually large packages? No, no, and no, what else did she expect?

  She didn’t see the young man with the tousled hair gather up equipment as he backed away, and it was only when he jumped overboard that she awoke from her bored lethargy. Running down the length of the boat, she stripped off her handbag, kicked off her shoes, and dived into the sea after him. He had pulled on a mask and an air tank before going over the side, and she saw him below her. Even though he lacked fins, he was diving deep where he must have suspected that she—not being similarly equipped—would not follow.

  He was wrong about both her ability and her resolve. Her father had thrown her into a pool on her first birthday, much to her mother’s horror, and had taught her endurance, stamina, and speed, all of which had served her well throughout high school and college, when she’d won every award imaginable. She could have made the Olympic team, but by that time the intelligence system had engaged her and she had more important things on her agenda.

  Now she powered down, slicing her way through the water, but as she neared him, he turned, startled that she had drawn so close, so quickly, and raised his spear gun. He was cocking the mechanism that drew back the barbed bolt when she struck him. He tenaciously maintained his grip on the weapon, successfully readying it to fire even as she twisted his body backward. He brought the butt of the spear gun down against her temple and as her hands came off him, he lowered the barb until it was aimed at her chest.

  She scissored her legs in a powerful kick just before he pulled the trigger, and the bolt shot by her. Then she made a grab for him. Now she was uninterested in the weapon or in his hands and feet. Her sole imperative was to pull off his mask, to even the playing field between them, because her lungs were beginning to burn and she knew she couldn’t stay under for much longer.

  Her pounding heart beat off the seconds, one, two, three, as they struggled, until at last she managed to rip off his mask. Water flooded against his face and, though he twisted to the left and right, she pulled the mouthpiece out and inserted it into her mouth, taking a couple of breaths before she kicked upward, holding him in an armlock. She spat out the mouthpiece as they bobbed to the surface.

  The captain had raised the anchor while they’d been underwater, and now the boat maneuvered close enough for hands to reach down and pull them both aboard.

  “Get my handbag,” Soraya said breathlessly as she sat on the young man’s back, pinning him to the deck. She took deep, even breaths, smoothed her hair back from her face, and felt the water already warmed by the sun trickling over her shoulders.

  “Is this the one you’re looking for?” the owner asked anxiously as he handed over the bag. “He’s been here for three days, no more.”

  Shaking her hands to dry them, Soraya rummaged for her phone. She opened it, slowed her breathing even more, and punched in Chalthoum’s number. When he answered, she told him where she was.

  “Good work. I’ll meet you on the dock in ten minutes,” he said.

  Putting her cell away, she glanced down at the young man beneath her.

  “Get off me,” he panted. “I can’t breathe.”

  Sitting on his diaphragm wasn’t helping, she knew, but she could summon up no sympathy.

  “Sonny,” she said, “you are in a world of hurt.”

  Bourne awoke into a web of shadows. The soft, intermittent hiss of traffic drew his eyes to a shaded window. Outside, streetlights shone through the darkness. He was lying on his side on what felt like a bed. Moving his head, he looked around the bedroom, which was small and comfortably furnished but didn’t feel well lived in. Beyond an open doorway a slice of living room was visible. He stirred, sensing he was alone. Where was he? Where was Tracy?

  In answer to his second question, he heard the front door open in the living room and recognized Tracy’s sharp, quick gait as she came across a wooden floor. When she entered the bedroom, he tried to sit up.

  “Please don’t, you’ll only aggravate your wound,” she said. She put down some packages and sat beside him

on the bed.

  “My back was barely scratched.”

  She shook her head. “A bit deeper, but I’m talking about the wound in your chest. It’s started seeping.” She unpacked items she had obviously bought at the local pharmacy: alcohol, antibiotic cream, sterile pads, and the like. “Now hold still.”

  As she went to work stripping the old bandage and cleaning the wound, she said, “My mother warned me about men like you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Always getting into trouble.” Her fingers worked quickly, nimbly, surely. “The difference is that you know how to get yourself out of whatever mess blows up around you.”

  He grimaced at the pain but didn’t flinch. “I have no choice.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s true.” She bunched up a wad of soiled sterile pads, then took up another, soaking it in alcohol and applying it to the reddened flesh. “I think you go looking for trouble, I think that’s who you are, I think you’d be unhappy—and, worse for you, bored—if you didn’t.”

  Bourne laughed softly, but he didn’t think she was far off the mark.

  She examined the newly cleaned wound. “Not so bad, I doubt you’ll need a fresh round of antibiotics.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  She smiled. “On occasion, when I have to be.”

  “That answer requires an explanation.”

  She palpated the flesh around his wound. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “I got shot, don’t change the subject.”

  She nodded. “Okay, as a young woman—a very young woman—I spent two years in West Africa. There was unrest, fighting, horrible atrocities perpetrated. I was assigned to a field hospital where I learned triage, how to dress a wound. One day we were so overloaded with wounded and dying, the doctor put an instrument in my hand and said, ‘There’s an entry wound but no exit wound. If you don’t get the bullet out right away your patient will die.’ Then he went off to work on two other patients at once.”