The Bourne Betrayal Part 23

"Not sins, Jamil. We all have our blind spots, even you."

"You're dangerous," he said, meaning it.

Anne shrugged. "I'm not any different from your Islamic women, except I recognize the strength inside me."

"This is precisely what makes you dangerous."

"Only to the status quo."

There was silence for a moment. She had pushed him farther than anyone else would dare. But that was all right. She'd never fed him bulls.h.i.t like most of the others circling him to gain a measure of his influence and power. It was times like these that she wished she could crawl inside his mind, because he'd never willingly tell her what he was thinking, even by his expression or body language. He was something of an enigma, which in part was why she had been drawn to him in the first place. Men were usually so transparent. Not Jamil.

At length, she put a hand lightly over his. "You see how much like a marriage this is? For better or for worse, we're in it together. All the way to the end."

He contemplated her for a moment. "Drive east by southeast. Eighth Street, Northeast, between L and West Virginia Avenue."

Fadi would have been happy to put a bullet through Lieutenant Kove's head, but that would have led to all manner of complications he couldn't afford. Instead he contented himself with playing his part to the hilt.

This was hardly difficult; he was a born actor. His mother, recognizing his talent with a mother's unerring instinct, had enrolled him in the Royal Theatrical Academy when he was seven. By nine, he was an accomplished performer, which stood him in good stead when he became radicalized. Gathering followers-winning the hearts and minds of the poor, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the desperate-was, at bedrock, a matter of charisma. Fadi understood the essential nature of being a successful leader: It didn't matter what your philosophy was; all you needed to concern yourself with was how well you sold it. That was not to say Fadi was a cynic-no radical worth his salt could be. It simply meant he had learned the crucial lesson of market manipulation.

These thoughts brought the ghost of a smile to his full lips as he followed the bobbing police searchlights.

"These catacombs are two thousand kilometers long," Lieutenant Kove said, trying to be helpful. "A honeycomb all the way to the village of Nerubaiskoye, half an hour's drive from here."

"Surely not all of the catacombs are pa.s.sable." Fadi had taken in the cracked and rotting wooden beams, walls that bulged alarmingly in places, offshoots blocked by debris falls.

"No, sir," Lieutenant Kove said. "They run short tours out of the museum in Nerubaiskoye, but of those who venture down here on their own the percentage of dead and missing is exceedingly high."

Fadi could feel the anxiety mounting in the contingent of three policemen Lieutenant Kove had chosen to accompany them. He realized that Kove continued to talk in order to damp down on his own nervousness.

Anyone else would have picked up this agitation from his companions, but Fadi was incapable of feeling fear. He approached new and perilous situations with the steely confidence of a mountain climber. The possibility of failure never entered his mind. It wasn't that he didn't value life; it wasn't only that he didn't fear death. In order to feel alive, it was necessary to drive himself to extremes.

"If the man is wounded, as you told me, he can't get far," Lieutenant Kove said-though whether this was for Fadi's benefit or that of his jumpy men wasn't entirely clear. "I have some expertise in this place. This close to the water, the catacombs are particularly susceptible to falls and cave-ins. We must also watch out for slurry pits. The seepage in some spots is so bad that it has undermined the integrity of the floor. These pits are particularly dangerous because they act like quicksand. A man can be pulled under in less than a minute."

The lieutenant broke off abruptly. Everyone in their contingent was standing stock-still. The point man was half turned toward them. He made a gesture indicating that he'd heard something from up ahead. They waited, sweating.

Then it came again: a soft sc.r.a.ping sound as of leather against stone. A boot heel?

The lieutenant's expression had changed. It now resembled a hunting dog that had scented its prey. He nodded, and silently they moved forward.

Anne drove Detective Overton's car through increasingly dest.i.tute neighborhoods, cruising past intersections with burned-out traffic lights and lewdly defaced street signs. It was fully dark now, winter's ashy twilight having fallen by the wayside, along with neat row houses, clean streets, museums, and monuments. This was another city on another planet, but it was one with which Karim al-Jamil was all too familiar and in which he felt comfortable.

They drifted down 8th Street until Karim al-Jamil pointed out a double-width cement block building on which a faded sign was still affixed: M&N BODYWORK. At his direction, Anne swung onto a cracked cement ap.r.o.n, stopping in front of the metal doors.

He jumped out. As they walked up the ap.r.o.n, he took a long, lingering look around. The shadows were deep here where few streetlights remained. Illumination came in fits and starts from the headlights of cars pa.s.sing on L Street NE, to the north and West Virginia Avenue to the south. There were only two or three cars parked on this block, none of them near where they stood. The sidewalks were clear; the windows of the houses, dark and blank.

He opened a large padlock with a key taken from beneath a small section of cracked concrete. Then he rolled up the door and signaled Anne.

She put the car in gear. When she was abreast of him, she rolled down her window.

"Last chance," he said. "You can walk away now."

She said nothing, didn't budge from behind the wheel.

He searched her eyes in the firefly light of the pa.s.sing cars, looking for the truth. Then he waved her into the abandoned body shop. "Roll up your sleeves, then. Let's get to work."

"I hear them," Soraya whispered. "But I can't see their lights yet. That's a good sign."

"Fadi knows I'm wounded," Bourne said. "He knows I can't outrun them."

"He doesn't know about me," Soraya said.

"Just what do you intend?"

She rubbed Oleksandr's brindled coat, and he nuzzled her knee. They had come to a division, where the pa.s.sable catacomb branched into a Y. Without hesitation, she led them into the left-hand tunnel.

"How did you find me?"

"The way I'd shadow any target."

So it was Soraya he'd sensed following him, even when Yevgeny Feyodovich's men were off duty.

"Besides," she went on, "I know this city inside and out."

"How?"

"I was chief of station here when you arrived."

"When I... ?"

Instantly his mind filled with memory...

... Marie comes to him, in a place of mature acacia trees and cobbled streets. There is a sharp mineral tang in the air, as of a restless sea. A humid breeze lifts her hair off her ears, and it streams behind her like a banner.

He speaks to her. "You can get me what I want. I have faith in you."

There is fear in her eyes, but also courage, and determination. "I'll be back soon," she says. "I won't let you down."...

Bourne staggered under the a.s.sault of the memory. The acacia trees, the cobbled street: It was the approach to the cable car terminal. The face, the voice: It wasn't Marie he was speaking with. It was...

"Soraya!"

She gripped him now, fearing he'd lost so much blood that he couldn't continue.

"It was you! When I was in Odessa years ago, I was here with you!"

"I was the agent in place. You wanted nothing to do with me, but in the end you had no choice. It was my conduit who was funneling the intel you needed to get to your target."

"I remember talking to you under the acacia trees on French Boulevard. Why was I here? What the h.e.l.l happened? It's driving me crazy."

"I'll fill in the blanks."

He stumbled. With a strong hand, she pulled him upright.

"Why didn't you tell me we'd worked together when I first walked into the Typhon ops center?"

"I wanted to-"

"That look on your face-"

"We're almost there," Soraya said.

"Where?"

"The place where you and I holed up before."

They were now perhaps a thousand meters down the left-hand fork. Conditions looked particularly bad here. Cracked beams and seeping water were everywhere. The catacomb itself seemed to emit a terrible groaning sound, as if forces were threatening to pull it apart. He saw that she had led him toward a gap in the left wall. It wasn't an offshoot at all, but a section that had been worn away by seepage, as the tide will create a cove over time. But quickly they were confronted by a debris fall that filled the s.p.a.ce almost to the top.

He watched as Soraya climbed the mound, slithering on her belly through the s.p.a.ce between the top of the fall and the ceiling. He followed her, each step, each reach upward bringing a fresh stabbing pain to his side. By the time he wormed through, his entire body seemed to throb with the beat of his heart.

Soraya led him on, down a dogleg to the right, where they came upon what could only be called a room, with a raised plank platform for a bed, a thin blanket. Opposite were three smaller planks nailed between two wooden pillars on which several bottles of water and tins of food were arrayed.

"From the last time," Soraya said as she helped him onto the plank bed.

"I can't stay here," Bourne protested.

"Yes, you can. We have no antibiotics and you need a full dose, the sooner the better. I'm going to get some from the CI doctor. I know and trust her."

"Don't expect me to just lie here."

"Oleksandr will stay with you." She rubbed the boxer's shiny muzzle. "He'll guard you with his life, won't you, my little man?" The dog seemed to understand. He came and sat by Bourne, the tiny pink tip of his tongue showing between his incisors.

"This is crazy." Bourne swung his legs over the side of the makeshift bed. "We'll go together."

She watched him for a moment. "All right. Come on."

He pushed himself off the planks, and got to his feet. Or rather he tried to, his knees buckling as soon as he let go his grip on the plank. Soraya caught him, pushed him back onto the bed.

"Let's can that idea, okay?" She rubbed her knuckles absently between Oleksandr's triangular ears. "I'm going back to the fork in the catacombs. I need to take the right fork to get to the doctor, but I'll do it with just enough noise that they'll follow me, a.s.suming it's the two of us. I'll lead them away from you."

"It's too dangerous."

She waited a moment. "Any other ideas?"

He shook his head.

"Okay, I won't be long, I promise. I won't leave you behind."

"Soraya?"

She faced him in profile, her body already half turned to go.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

She hesitated for a split second. "I figured it was better all around that you couldn't remember how badly I'd f.u.c.ked up."

He watched her leave, her words echoing in his head.

A rugged fifteen-minute march brought them to a crossroads.

"We're at a major juncture," Lieutenant Kove said as their searchlights probed the beginnings of the Y.

Fadi didn't like hesitation. To him, indecision was a sign of weakness. "Then we need an educated guess, Kove, as to which fork he took." His eyes bored into the policeman's. "You're the expert. You tell me."

In Fadi's presence, it was nearly impossible either to disagree or to remain inactive. Kove said, "The right fork. That's the one I'd choose if I were in his position."

"Very well," Fadi said.

They entered the right fork. It was then that they heard the sound again, the sc.r.a.pe of leather on stone, more distinct this time and repeated at regular intervals. There could be no doubt that they were hearing footfalls echoing down the shaft. They were gaining on their quarry.

With a grim determination, Kove urged his men on. "Quickly, now! In a moment we'll overtake him."

"One moment."

They were brought up short by the cold voice of authority.

"Sir?"

Fadi thought for a moment. "I need one of those searchlights. You continue on the course you laid out. I'm going to see what I can find down the left fork."

"Sir, I hardly think that wise. As I told you-"

"I never need to be told anything twice," Fadi said shortly. "This criminal is devilishly clever. The sounds might be a feint, a way to throw us off their scent. In all probability, with the man having lost so much blood, you'll overtake him in the right fork. But I can't leave this other possibility unexplored."

Without another word, he took the light one of Kove's men offered and, backtracking several paces to the juncture of the Y, headed down the left-hand fork. A moment later, his snake-bladed knife was in his hand.

Seventeen.

KARIM AL-JAMIL, in thick rubber ap.r.o.n and heavy work gloves, pulled the cord that started the chain saw. Under cover of its horrific noise, he said, "Our objective to detonate a nuclear device in a major American city has been a decade in conception and planning." Not that he suspected there to be a microphone in sight, but his training would not allow him to relax his strict code of security.

He approached the corpse of Detective Overton, which lay on a zinc-topped table inside the eerie hollow interior of M&N Bodywork. A trio of purplish fluorescent lights sizzled above their heads.