The Bourne Betrayal Part 33

Abbud ibn Aziz, staring at the battery of gleaming equipment, said, "Don't you think of anything else? This is precisely what you said to me three years ago."

"Circ.u.mstances have changed, radically. It's our duty to tell him."

"I disagree, in the strongest possible terms, just as I did then," Abbud ibn Aziz replied. "In fact, it's our duty to keep the truth from Fadi and Karim al-Jamil."

"There's no logic to your argument now."

"Really? The central issue now is the same at it was in the beginning. With Sarah ibn Ashef's death, they have suffered an unsupportable loss. Should there be more? Sarah ibn Ashef was Allah's flower, the repository of the family's honor, the beautiful innocent destined for a life of happiness. It is vital that her memory be kept sacrosanct. Our duty is to insulate Fadi and Karim al-Jamil from outside distractions."

"Distraction," Muta ibn Aziz cried. "You call the truth about their sister a distraction?"

"What would you call it?"

"A full-scale disaster, a disgrace beyond anything-"

"And you would be the one to deliver this terrible truth to Fadi? Toward what end? What would you seek to accomplish?"

"Three years ago, I answered that question by saying I wanted simply to tell the truth," Muta ibn Aziz said. "Now their plan includes taking revenge on Jason Bourne."

"I see no reason to stop them. Bourne is a menace to us-you included. You were there that night, as was I."

"Their obsession with revenging their sister's death has warped both of them. What if they've overreached?"

"With one man?" Abbud ibn Aziz laughed.

"You were with Fadi both times in Odessa. Tell me, brother, was he successful in killing Bourne?"

Abbud ibn Aziz reacted to his brother's icy tone. "Bourne was wounded, very badly. Fadi hounded him into the catacombs beneath the city. I very much doubt he survived. But really, it's of no consequence. He's incapacitated; he cannot harm us now. It's Allah's will. Whatever happened, happened. Whatever happens, will happen."

"And I say that as long as there's the slightest possibility of Bourne being alive, neither of them will rest. The distraction will continue. Whereas if we tell them-"

"Silence! It is Allah's will!"

Abbud ibn Aziz had never before spoken to his younger brother with such venom. Between them, Muta ibn Aziz knew, lay the death of Sarah ibn Ashef, a topic about which both thought but never, ever spoke. The silence was an evil thing, Muta ibn Aziz knew, a poisoning of the well of their fraternal bond. He harbored a strong conviction that one day, the deliberately invoked silence would destroy him and his older brother.

Not for the first time he felt a wave of despair roll over him. In these moments, it seemed to him that he was trapped; that no matter which way he turned, no matter what action he took now, he and his brother were condemned to the h.e.l.lfire reserved for the wicked. La ilaha illallah! May Allah forbid the Fire from touching us!

As if to underscore Muta's dark thoughts, Abbud reiterated the stance he had taken from the night of her death: "In the matter of Sarah ibn Ashef, we keep our own counsel," he said flatly. "You will obey me without question, just as you've always done. Just as you must do. We are not individuals, brother, we are links in the family chain. La ilaha ill allah! The fate of one is the fate of all."

The man sitting cross-legged at the head of a low wooden table laden with paraphernalia regarded Fadi with a jaundiced eye. Doubtless, this was because he had the use of only one eye-his left. The other, beneath its white Egyptian cotton patch, was a blackened crater.

Kicking off his shoes, Fadi padded across the poured concrete floor. Every floor, wall, and ceiling in Miran Shah was of poured concrete, looked identical. He sat at a ninety-degree angle from the other.

From a gla.s.s jar, he shook out a fistful of coffee beans that had been roasted hours ago. He dropped them into a bra.s.s mortar, took up the pestle, ground them to a fine powder. A copper pot sat atop the ring of a portable gas burner. Fadi poured water from a pitcher into the pot, then lit the burner. A circle of blue flame licked at the bottom of the pot.

"It's been some time," Fadi said.

"Do you actually expect me to drink with you?" said the real Martin Lindros.

"I expect you to behave like a civilized human being."

Lindros laughed bitterly, touched the center of his eye patch with the tip of his forefinger. "That would make one of us."

"Have a date," Fadi said, pushing an oval plate piled high with the dried fruit in front of Lindros.

"They're best dipped in this goat b.u.t.ter."

The moment the water began to boil, Fadi upended the mortar, spilling the coffee powder into the pot. He drew to him a small cup, whose contents were fragrant with the scent of freshly crushed cardamom seeds. Now all his concentration was on the roiling coffee. An instant before it would have foamed up, he took the pot off the burner, with the fingers of his right hand he dropped a few crushed cardamom seeds into the coffee, then poured it into what looked like a small teapot. A fragment of palm fiber stuffed into the spout served to keep the grounds out of the liquid. Setting the pot aside, Fadi poured the qahwah 'Arabiyah-the Arabic coffee-into a pair of tiny cups without handles. He served Lindros first, as any Bedouin would his honored guest, though never before had a Bedouin sat cross-legged in such a tent-immense, subterranean, fashioned of concrete half a meter thick.

"How's your brother doing? I hope seeing with my eye will give him a different perspective. Perhaps he won't be so h.e.l.l-bent on the destruction of the West."

"Do you really wish to speak of destruction, Martin? We shall speak then of America's forced exportation of a culture riddled with the decadence of a jaded populace that wants everything immediately, that no longer understands the meaning of the word sacrifice. We shall speak of America's occupation of the Middle East, of its willful destruction of ancient traditions."

"Then those traditions must include the blowing up of religious statues, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Those traditions must include the stoning of women who commit adultery, while their lovers go without punishment."

"I-a Saudi Bedouin-have as much to do with the Taliban as you do. And as for adulterous women, there is Islamic law to consider. We are not individuals, Martin, but part of a family unit. The honor of the family resides in its daughters. If our sisters are shamed, that shame reflects on all in the family until the woman is excised."

"To kill your own flesh and blood? It's inhuman."

"Because it's not your way?" Fadi made a gesture with his head. "Drink."

Lindros raised his cup to his lips, downed the coffee in one gulp.

"You must sip it, Martin." Fadi refilled Lindros's cup, then drank his coffee in three small, savory sips. With his right hand, he took up a date, dipped it in the fragrant b.u.t.ter, then popped it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, thoughtfully, and spat out the long, flat pit. "It will do you good to try one. Dates are delicious, and ever so nutritious. Do you know that Muhammad would invariably break his fast with dates? So do we, because it brings us closer to his ideals."

Lindros stared at him, stiff and silent, as if on vigil.

Fadi wiped his right hand on a small towel. "You know, my father made coffee from morning to night. That's the highest compliment I could pay him-or any Bedouin. It means he's a generous man." He refilled his coffee cup. "However, my father can no longer make coffee. In fact, he can do nothing at all but stare into s.p.a.ce. My mother speaks to him, but he cannot answer. Do you know why, Martin?" He drained his cup in three more sips. "Because his name is Abu Sarif Hamid ibn Ashef al-Wahhib."

At this, Lindros's good eye gave a slight twitch.

"Yes, that's right," Fadi said. "Hamid ibn Ashef. The man you sent Jason Bourne to kill."

"So that's why you captured me."

"You think so?"

"That wasn't my mission, you fool. I didn't even know Jason Bourne then. His handler was Alex Conklin, and Conklin's dead." Lindros began to laugh.

Without any warning Fadi lunged across the table and grabbed Lindros by his shirtfront. He shook him so violently that Lindros's teeth chattered.

"You think you're so clever, Martin. But now you're going to pay for it. You and Bourne."

Fadi gripped Lindros's throat as if he wanted to rip out his windpipe. He took visible pleasure in the man's gasps.

"Bourne is still alive, I'm told, though just barely. Still and all, I know he'll move heaven and earth to find you, especially if he thinks I'll be here as well."

"What... what are you going to do?" Lindros could barely spit the words through his labored breathing.

"I'm going to give him the information he needs, Martin, to find you here in Miran Shah. And when he does, I'll disembowel you in front of his eyes. Then I'll go to work on him."

Fadi put his face against Lindros's, peering into his left eye as if to find all the things Lindros was hiding from him. "In the end, Bourne will want to die, Martin. Of this there is no question. But for him, death will be a long time coming. Before he dies, I'll make certain he witnesses the nuclear destruction of the American capital."

Book Three

Twenty-four.

THE COFFIN is being lowered into the ground. Dull reflections spin off the handles, the inscribed panel set into its lid creating tiny dizzying whorls of light. In response to an emphatic gesture from the minister, the coffin hangs motionless in midair. The minister, dapper and trim in his European-cut suit, leans over the grave so far that Bourne is certain he'll fall in. But he does not. Instead, with an astonishing burst of superhuman strength, he wrenches off the coffin lid.

"What are you doing?" Bourne asks.

The minister turns to him, beckons as he drops the heavy mahogany lid into the grave, and Bourne sees that it isn't the minister at all. It's Fadi.

"Come on," Fadi says in Saudi Arabic. He lights up a cigarette, hands Bourne the matchbook.

"Take a look."

Bourne takes a step forward, peers into the open coffin...

... and finds himself sitting in the backseat of a car. He looks out the window and sees a familiar landscape that he nevertheless cannot identify. He shakes the driver's shoulder.

"Where are we going?"

The driver turns around. It's Lindros. But there's something wrong with his face. It's shadowed, or scarred: It's the Lindros he brought back to CI headquarters. "Where do you think?" the Lindros impostor says, increasing their speed.

Leaning forward, Bourne sees a figure standing by the side of the road. They come up on it fast. A young woman, a hitchhiker with her thumb out: Sarah. They're almost abreast of her when she takes a step into the path of the speeding car.

Bourne tries to shout a warning, but he is mute. He feels the car lurch and buck, sees Sarah's body flung into the air, blood streaming from her. In a rage, he reaches for the driver...

... and finds himself aboard a bus. The pa.s.sengers, blank-faced, ignore him completely. Bourne moves forward along the aisle between the sets of seats. The driver is wearing a neat suit of European manufacture. He is Dr. Sunderland, the D.C. memory specialist.

"Where are we going?" Bourne asks him.

"I already told you." Dr. Sunderland points.

Through the huge pane of the windshield, Bourne sees the beach at Odessa. He sees Fadi smoking a cigarette, smiling, waiting for him.

"It's all been arranged," Dr. Sunderland says, "from the beginning."

The bus slows. There is a gun in Fadi's hand. Dr. Sunderland opens the door for him; he swings aboard, aims the gun at Bourne, then pulls the trigger...

Bourne awoke to the sound of a reverberating gunshot. Someone stood over him. A man with a blue stubble of beard, deeply embedded eyes, and a low, simian hairline. Gauzy light slanted in through the window, illuminating the man's long, somber face. Behind him, the sky was striped blue and white.

"Ah, Lieutenant General Mykola Petrovich Tuz. You're awake at last." His atrocious Russian was further slurred by heavy drinking. "I'm Dr. Korovin."

For a moment Bourne couldn't remember where he was. The bed rocking gently beneath him made his heart skip a beat. He'd been here before-had he lost his memory again?

Then everything came flooding back. He took in the tiny medical infirmary, realized he was on the Itkursk, that he was Lieutenant General Mykola Petrovich Tuz, and said in a voice thick with cotton wool, "I require my a.s.sistant."

"Of course." Dr. Korovin took a step back. "She's right here."

His face was replaced by that of Soraya Moore's. "Lieutenant General," she said crisply. "You're feeling better."

He could clearly see the concern in her eyes. "We need to talk," he whispered.

She turned to the doctor. "Please leave us," she said curtly.

"Certainly," Dr. Korovin said. "In the meantime, I'll inform the captain that the lieutenant general is on his way to recovery."

As soon as the door closed behind him, Soraya sat on the edge of the bed. "Lerner has been deep-sixed," she said softly. "When I identified him as a foreign spy, the captain was only too happy to oblige. In fact, he's relieved. He doesn't want any adverse publicity, and that goes double for the freight company, so over the side Lerner went."

"Where are we?" Bourne said.

"About forty minutes from Istanbul." Soraya gripped his arm gently as he sought to sit up. "As for Lerner being aboard ship, we both missed that."

"I think I missed something else, something even more important," Borne said. "Hand me my trousers."

They were hanging neatly over the back of a chair. Soraya pa.s.sed them to Bourne. "We need to get some food into you. The doctor pumped you full of fluids while he fixed you up. He tells me you should be feeling much better in a couple of hours."

"In a minute." He could feel the dull ache of the knife wound and the place where Lerner had kicked him. There was a bandage around his right biceps where the ice pick had pierced him, but he felt no pain there. He closed his eyes, but that only brought back his dream of Fadi, the impostor, Sarah, and Dr. Sunderland.

"Jason, what is it?"

He opened his eyes. "Soraya, it isn't only Dr. Sunderland who's been playing around inside my head."

"What do you mean?"

Rummaging through his pockets, he found a matchbook. Fadi lights up a cigarette, hands Bourne the matchbook. That image had been in Bourne's dream, but it had happened in real life. Bourne, under the influence of Sunderland's implanted memories, had taken Fadi out of the Typhon cell. Outside, Fadi had lit a cigarette with a matchbook-"Nothing to burn in the hole so they let me keep it," he'd said. Then he'd handed Bourne the matchbook.

Why had he done that? It had been such a simple gesture, barely noticed or recorded in memory, especially with what had come after. Fadi had been counting on that.

"A matchbook?" Soraya said.

"The matchbook Fadi handed me outside CI headquarters." Bourne opened it. It was all but ruined, creased, the corners bent, the writing nearly unintelligible from the soaking Bourne had endured in the Black Sea.

Virtually the only thing left intact were the bottom layers, from which the matches themselves were torn off. Using a thumbnail, Bourne pried off the metal staples that had held the matches in place. Underneath he found a tiny oblong of metal and ceramic.

"My G.o.d, he bugged you."

Bourne examined it closely. "It's a tracer." He handed it to her. "I want you to throw it overboard. Right now."