The Bourne Betrayal Part 40

As she walked, she kept her eye on the houses she pa.s.sed-torn up, beaten down, singed by poverty, neglect, and flames. Rubble and rubbish filled their tiny front yards, as if the street were inhabited by junkmen displaying their woebegone wares for sale. The air was fouled by the stench of rotting garbage and urine, defeat and despair. Gaunt dogs ran here and there, baring their yellow teeth at her.

She was like a drowning woman, clutching at the only thing that could save her from going under. Her palm felt sweaty against the grip of the handgun. The day had finally arrived, she thought vaguely, when all her hours on the firing range would stand her in good stead. She could hear the deep, crisp voice of the CI firearms instructor correcting her stance or her grip while she reloaded the agency-issue S&W.

She thought again of her sister, Joyce, remembering the pain of their shared childhood. But surely there had been pleasure, too, hadn't there, on the nights they had slept in one bed, telling each other ghost stories, seeing which one of them would be the first to scream in fear? Anne felt like a ghost now, drifting through a world she could only haunt. She crossed the street, pa.s.sing an open lot with weeds as high as her waist, tenacious even in winter. Tires, worn as an old man's face, empty plastic bottles, syringes, used condoms and cell phones, one red sock with the toe cap gone. And a severed arm.

Anne jumped, her heart pounding against the cage of her chest. A doll's arm only. But her heart rate didn't come down. She stared in grim fascination at that severed arm. It was like Joyce's aborted future, lying in a slag-heap of dead weeds. What exactly was the difference between Joyce's future and her own present? she asked herself. She hadn't cried in the longest time. Now it seemed that she had forgotten how.

Day had descended into the grave of night, icy rain had turned to clammy fog. Moisture seemed to congeal on her hair, the backs of her hands. Now and again a siren rose in distress, only to fall again into uneasy silence.

From behind her came the grumble of an engine. She paused, her heart hammering, waiting for the car to pa.s.s. When it didn't, she began to walk again, more quickly. The car, emerging from the fog, kept pace just behind her.

All at once she reversed course and, with her hand gripping the S&W, walked back toward the car. As she did so, it stopped. The driver's-side window rolled down, revealing a long, withered face the color of old shoe leather, the bottom half of which was whiskery and gray.

"You look like you're lost," the driver said in a voice gravelly with a lifetime of tar and nicotine.

"Gypsy cab." He tipped his baseball cap. "I thought you might need a ride. There's a crew down the end a the block lickin' their chops at the thought a you."

"I can take care of myself." Sudden fear caused her to sound de-fensive.

The cabbie eyed her with a downtrodden expression. "Whatever."

As he put the car in gear, Anne said, "Wait!" She pa.s.sed a hand across her damp brow. She felt as if a raging fever had broken. Who was she kidding? She didn't have it in her to shoot Soraya, let alone kill her.

Grabbing the rear door handle, she slid into the gypsy cab and gave the driver her address. She didn't want to go back to CI headquarters. She couldn't face either Jamil or the Old Man. She wondered whether she'd ever be able to face them again.

Then she noticed that the cabbie had turned around to scrutinize her face.

"What?" Anne said, a bit too defensively.

The cabbie grunted. "You G.o.dd.a.m.n good lookin'."

Opting for forbearance, she took out a clutch of bills, waving them in his face. "Are you going to give me a ride or not?"

The cabbie licked his lips, put the car in gear.

As the car started off, she leaned forward. "Just so you know," she said, "I've got a gun."

"So do I, sister." The grizzled cabbie leered at her. "So do f.u.c.kin' I."

The DCI met Luther LaValle at Thistle, a trendy restaurant on 19th and Q NW. He'd had Anne book a center table, because when he talked to LaValle he wanted them to be surrounded by raucous diners.

The Pentagon's intelligence czar was already seated when the Old Man arrived from out of the dense winter fog into the restaurant's roar. In a navy-blue suit, crisp white shirt, and red-and-blue-striped regimental tie pierced by an American flag enamel pin, LaValle looked out of place surrounded by young men and women of the next generation.

LaValle's boxer's torso ballooned the suit in the way of all overly muscled men. He looked like Bruce Banner in the process of transforming into the Hulk. Smiling thinly, he rose from his scotch and soda to give the DCI's proffered hand a perfunctory squeeze.

The Old Man took the chair across from him. "Good of you to meet me at such short notice, Luther."

LaValle spread his brutal, blunt-fingered hands. "What are you having?"

"Oban," the Old Man said to the waiter who had appeared at his elbow. "Make it a double, one ice cube, but only if it's large."

The waiter gave a little nod, vanished into the crowd.

"Large ice cubes are best for liquor," the DCI said to his companion. "They take longer to melt."

The intelligence czar said nothing, but looked at the Old Man expectantly. When the single-malt scotch arrived, the two men raised their gla.s.ses and drank.

"The traffic tonight is insufferable," the DCI said.

"It's the fog," LaValle responded vaguely.

"When was the last time we got together like this?"

"You know, I can't recall."

Both seemed to be talking to the young couple at the next table. Their neutral words sat between them like p.a.w.ns, already sacrificed on the field of battle. The waiter returned with menus. They opened them, made their choices, and once again were left to their own devices.

The DCI pulled a dossier from his slim briefcase and set it on the table, unopened. His palms came down heavily on it. "I a.s.sume you've heard about the utility truck that went out of control outside the Corcoran."

"A traffic accident?" LaValle shrugged. "Do you know how many of those occur in the district each hour?"

"This one is different," the Old Man said. "The truck was trying to run down one of my people."

LaValle took a sip of his scotch and soda. The Old Man thought he drank like a lady.

"Which one?"

"Anne Held, my a.s.sistant. Martin Lindros was with her. He saved her."

LaValle leaned down, came back with his own dossier. It had the Pentagon's seal on its cover. He opened it and, without a word, reversed it, pa.s.sing it across the table.

As the Old Man began to read, LaValle said, "Someone inside your headquarters is sending and receiving periodic messages."

The Old Man was shocked in more ways than one. "Since when is the Pentagon monitoring CI communications? Dammit, that's a gross breach of interagency protocol."

"I ordered it, with the president's okay. We thought it necessary. When Secretary Halliday became aware of a mole inside CI-"

"From Matthew Lerner, his creature," the DCI said heatedly. "Halliday has no business creeping into my shorts. And without me, the president is getting improperly briefed."

"It was done for the agency's own good."

Thunderclouds of indignation cracked open across the DCI's face. "Are you implying that I no longer know what's good for CI?"

LaValle's finger stabbed out. "You see, there. The electronic signal is piggybacking on CI carrier waves. It's encrypted. We haven't been able to break it. Also, we don't know who's doing the communicating. But from the dates it clearly can't be Hytner, the agent you IDed as the mole. He was already dead."

The Old Man shifted aside the Pentagon dossier, opened his own. "I'll take care of this leak, if that's what it is," he said. Likely as not what these idiots had picked up was a clandestine Typhon communique with one of its deep-cover overseas operatives. Of course Martin's black-ops department wouldn't use normal CI channels. "And you'll take care of the defense secretary."

"I beg your pardon?" For the first time since they had sat down together, LaValle appeared nonplussed.

"That utility van I mentioned earlier, the one that tried to run over Anne Held."

"To be candid, Secretary Halliday shared with me that he suspected Anne Held of being the mole inside-"

The appetizers arrived: colossal pink prawns dipped in blood-red c.o.c.ktail sauce.

Before LaValle could pick up his tiny fork, the DCI held out a single sheet of paper he'd plucked from the dossier Martin had provided him. "The van that almost killed her was driven by the late Jon Mueller." He waited a beat. "You know Mueller, Luther, don't bother pretending otherwise. He was with Homeland Security, but he was trained by NSA. He knew Matthew Lerner. The two were whoring and drinking buddies, in fact. Both Halliday's creatures."

"Do you have any hard proof of this?" LaValle said blandly.

The Old Man was fully prepared for this question. "You already know the answer to that. But I have enough to start an investigation. Unexplained deposits in Mueller's bank account, a Lamborghini that Lerner couldn't possibly afford, trips to Las Vegas where both dropped bundles of cash. Arrogance begets stupidity; it's an axiom old as time." He took back the sheet of paper. "I a.s.sure you that once the investigation gets to the Senate, the net that'll be thrown out will catch not only Halliday but those close to him."

He folded his arms. "Frankly, I don't fancy a scandal of this grave a scope. It would only help our enemies abroad." He lifted a prawn. "But this time, the secretary's gone too far. He believes he can do anything he wants, even sanctioning a murder using our government's men."

He paused here to let these words sink in. As the intelligence czar's eyes rose to meet his, the Old Man said, "Here is where I make my stand. I cannot condone such a recklessly unlawful act. Neither, I think, can you."

Muta ibn Aziz sat brooding, watching the sky outside the jet's Perspex window glowing blue-black. Below him was the unruffled skin of the Caspian Sea, obscured now and again by streaks of clouds the color of a gull's wing.

He inhabited a dark corner of Dujja, performing the demeaning task of messenger boy, while his brother basked in the limelight of Fadi's favor. And all because of that one moment in Odessa, the lie they had told Fadi and Karim that Abbud had forbidden him to correct. Abbud had said he must keep quiet for Fadi's sake, but now, when Muta looked at the situation from a distance, he realized that this was yet another lie perpetrated by his brother. Abbud insisted on hiding the truth about Sarah ibn Ashef's death for his own sake, for the consolidation of his own power within Dujja.

Rousing himself, Muta saw the dark smudge of land coming into view. He glanced at his watch. Right on schedule. Rising, he stretched, hesitating. His thoughts went to the man piloting the jet. He knew this wasn't the real pilot; he'd failed to give the recognition sign when he'd emerged from the woods. Who was he then? A CI agent, certainly; Jason Bourne, most probably. But then he had received a cell phone text message three hours ago that Jason Bourne was dead, according to an eyewitness and the electronic tracker, which now resided at the bottom of the Black Sea.

But what if the eyewitness lied? What if Bourne, discovering the tracker, had thrown it into the ocean? Who else could this pilot be but Jason Bourne, the Chameleon?

He went up the central aisle, into the c.o.c.kpit. The pilot kept his attention focused on the neat rows of dials in front of him.

"We're coming up on Iranian airs.p.a.ce," Muta said. "Here's the code you need to radio in."

Bourne nodded.

Muta stood, his legs spread slightly apart, gazing at the back of the pilot's head. He drew out his Korovin TK.

"Call in the code," he said.

Ignoring him, Bourne continued to fly the plane into Iranian airs.p.a.ce.

Muta ibn Aziz took a step forward, put the muzzle of the Korovin at the base of Bourne's skull.

"Radio in the code immediately."

"Or what?" Bourne said. "You'll shoot me? Do you know how to fly a Sovereign?"

Of course Muta didn't, which was why he'd gotten on board with the impostor. Just then the radio squawked.

An electronically thinned voice said in Farsi, "Salam aleikom. Esmetan chi st?"

Bourne picked up the mike. "Salam aleikom," he responded.

"Esmetan chi st?" the voice said. What is your name?

Muta said, "Are you insane? Give him the code at once."

"Esmetan chi st!" came the voice from the radio. It was no longer a question. "Esmetan chi st!" It was a command.

"d.a.m.n you, radio the code!" Muta was shaking with rage and terror. "Otherwise they'll shoot us out of the sky!"

Thirty-one.

BOURNE PUT the Sovereign into such a sudden, steep bank to the left that Muta ibn Aziz was thrown across the c.o.c.kpit, fetching up hard against the starboard bulkhead. As Muta ibn Aziz struggled to regain his footing, Bourne sent the jet into a dive, simultaneously banking it to the right. Muta ibn Aziz slipped backward, banging his head on the edge of the doorway.

Bourne glanced back. Fadi's messenger was unconscious.

The radar was showing two fighter planes coming up fast from beneath him. The hair-trigger Iranian government had wasted no time in scrambling its air defense. He brought the Sovereign around, caught a visual fix. What the Iranians had sent to intercept him were a pair of Chinese-built J-6s, reverse-engineered copies of the old MiG-19 used in the mid-1950s. These jets were so out of date, the Chengdu plant had stopped manufacturing them more than a decade ago. Even so, they were armed and the Sovereign wasn't. He needed to do something to negate that enormous advantage.

They'd expect him to turn tail and run. Instead he lowered the Sovereign's nose and put on a burst of speed as he headed directly toward them. Clearly startled, the Iranian pilots did nothing until the last moment, when they each peeled away from the Sovereign's path.

As soon as they'd done so, Bourne pulled back on the yoke and brought the Sovereign's nose to the vertical, performing a loop that set him behind both of them. They turned, describing paths like cloverleafs, homing in on him from either side.

They began to fire at him. He dipped below the crossfire, and it ceased immediately. Choosing the J-6 on the right because it was slightly closer, he banked sharply toward it. He allowed it to come under him, allowed the pilot to a.s.sume he'd made a tactical error. Taking evasive maneuvers as the chatter of the machine gun sprang up again, he waited until the J-6 had locked on to his tail, then he tipped the Sovereign's nose up again. The Iranian pilot had seen the maneuver before and was ready, climbing steeply just behind the Sovereign. He knew what Bourne would do next: put the Sovereign into a steep dive. This Bourne did, but he also banked sharply to the right. The J-6 followed, even as Bourne punched in every ounce of the Sovereign's speed. The plane began to chatter in the powerful shearing force. Bourne steepened both the bank and the dive.

Behind him, the old J-6 was shuddering and jerking. All at once a handful of rivets were sucked off the left wing. The wing crumpled as if punched by an invisible fist. The wing ripped from its socket in the fuselage. The two sections of the J-6 blew apart in a welter of stripped and shredded metal, plummeting end-over-end downward to the earth.

Bullets ripped through the Sovereign's skin as the second J-6 came after them. Now Bourne lit out for the border to Afghanistan, crossing it within seconds. The second Iranian J-6, undeterred, came on, its engines screaming, its guns chattering.

Just south of the position where he had crossed into Afghani airs.p.a.ce was a chain of mountains that began in northern Iran. The mountains didn't rise to significant height, however, until they reached Bourne's current position, just northwest of Koh-i-Markhura. With a compa.s.s heading of east by southeast, he dipped the Sovereign toward the highest peaks.

The J-6 was shuddering and shrieking as it flattened out the curve of its descent. Having seen what had happened to his companion, the Iranian pilot had no intention of getting that close to the Sovereign. But it shadowed Bourne's plane, d.o.g.g.i.ng it from behind and just above, now and again firing short bursts at his engines.

Bourne could see that the pilot was trying to herd him into a narrow valley between two sharp-edged mountains that loomed ahead. In the confined s.p.a.ce, the pilot sought to keep the Sovereign's superior maneuverability to a minimum, catch it in the chute, and shoot it down.

The mountains rose up, blocking out light on either side. The ma.s.sive rock faces blurred by. Both planes were in the chute now. The Iranian pilot had the Sovereign just where he wanted it. He began to fire in earnest, knowing that his prey was limited in the evasive maneuvers it could take.

Bourne felt several more hits judder through the Sovereign. If the J-6 hit an engine, he was finished. The end would come before he had a chance to react. Turning the plane on its right wingtip, he waggled out of the line of fire. But the maneuver would help him only temporarily. Unless he could find a more permanent solution, the J-6 would shoot him out of the sky.

Off to his left he saw a jagged rift in the sheer mountain wall, and immediately headed for it. Almost at once he saw the danger: a spire of rock splitting the aperture in two.

The defile they were in was now so narrow that behind him, the J-6 had a.s.sumed the same sideways position. Bourne maneuvered the Sovereign ever so slightly, keeping the profile of his plane between the J-6 and the rock spire.

As far as the Iranian pilot knew, they were both going to fly through the aperture. He was so h.e.l.l-bent on blowing the Sovereign away that when, at the last moment, his prey moved slightly to the right in order to pa.s.s through the rift, he had no chance to react. The spire came up on him, froze him with its frightful proximity, and then his plane smashed into the rock spire, sending up a fireball out of which a column of black smoke shot upward into the arid sky. The J-6 and its pilot, now no more than a hail of white-hot debris, vanished as if by a conjuror's hand.

Soraya awoke to the sound of a baby crying. She tried to move, groaned as her traumatized nerves rebelled in pain. As if her sound antagonized it, the baby started to scream. Soraya looked around. She was in a grimy room, filled with grimy light. The smells of cooking and closely packed human beings clogged the air. A cheap print of Christ on the cross hung at a slant on the grimy wall across from her. Where was she?