The Bourne Betrayal Part 41

"Hey!" she called.

A moment later, Tyrone appeared. He was holding an infant in the crook of his left arm. The baby's face was so scrunched up in rage, all its features were sucked into its wrinkled center. It looked like a fist.

"Yo, how yo feelin' yo?"

"Like I just went fifteen rounds with Lennox Lewis." Soraya made another, more concerted effort to sit up. As she struggled, she said, "Man, do I owe you."

"Take yo up on dat sumtime." He grinned as he came into the room.

"What happened to the guys from the black Ford? They didn't follow you-?"

"They f.u.c.kin' dead, girl. Sure as s.h.i.t, they won't bother yo no mo."

The squalling baby turned her head, staring right into Soraya's eyes with that pure vulnerability only very young children had. Her screams subsided to gulping sobs.

"Here." Soraya held out her arms. Tyrone transferred the baby to her. At once she laid her head against Soraya's breast, gave a tiny squawk. "She's hungry, Tyrone."

He left the room, returning several moments later with a bottle full of milk. He turned it over, tested the temperature on the inside of his wrist.

"S'okay," he said, handing it to her.

Soraya looked at him for a moment.

"What?"

She put the bottle's nipple to the infant's lips. "I never thought of you as being domesticated."

"Yo evah thought a me havin' a kid?"

"This baby's yours?"

"Nah. Belongs t'my sis." He half turned and called: "Aisha!"

The doorway remained empty for a time, but Tyrone must have detected movement, because he said, "C'mon, yo."

Soraya saw a shadow of movement, then a thin little girl with big coffee-colored eyes stood framed in the doorway.

"Doan yo go bein' shy, girl." Tyrone's voice had softened. "This here's Miss Spook."

Aisha crunched up her face. "Miss Spook! Are you scary?"

Her father laughed good-naturedly. "Nah. Looka how she holdin' Darlonna. Yo woan bite, will ya, Miss Spook?"

"Not if you call me Soraya, Aisha." She smiled at the little girl, who was quite beautiful. "Think you can do that?"

Aisha stared at her, winding a braid around her tiny forefinger. Tyrone was about to admonish her again, but Soraya headed him off by saying, "You have such a pretty name. How old are you, Aisha?"

"Six," the girl said very softly. "What do your name mean? Mine means 'alive and well.'"

Soraya laughed. "I know, that's Arabic. Soraya is a Farsi word. It means 'princess.'"

Aisha's eyes opened wider, and she took several steps into the room. "Are you a real princess?"

Soraya, trying to keep the laughter down, said to her with exaggerated solemnity, "Not a real princess, no."

"She a kind a princess." Tyrone contrived to ignore Soraya's curious glance. "Only she not allowed to say so."

"Why?" The child, fully engaged now, tripped over to them.

"Because bad people are after her," Tyrone said.

The girl looked up at him. "Like the ones you shot, Daddy?"

In the ensuing silence, Soraya could hear raucous sounds from the street: the sudden throaty roar of motorcycles, the teeth-rattling blare of hip-hop, the clangor of heated conversations.

"Go play wid yo aunt Libby," he said, not unkindly.

Aisha gave one last glance toward Soraya, then whirled, skipped out of the room.

Tyrone turned to Soraya, but before he could say anything he took off one shoe, threw it hard and expertly into a corner. Soraya turned and saw the large rat lying on its side. The heel of Tyrone's shoe had nearly decapitated it. Wrapping the rat in some old newspaper, he wiped off his shoe, then took the rat out of the room.

When he returned, Tyrone said, "About Aisha's mother, it's a old story hereabouts. She got hit in a drive-by. She was wid two a her cousins who p.i.s.sed off some gangstas inna hood, skimmin' an s.h.i.t off a drug run." His face clouded. "I couldn't let that go, yo."

"No," Soraya said. "I don't imagine you could."

The baby had drifted off, draining the bottle. She lay in Soraya's arms breathing deeply and evenly.

Tyrone fell silent, abruptly shy. Soraya c.o.c.ked her head.

"What is it?"

"Yo, I got sumpin important to tell yo, leastways I think it's important." He sat on the edge of the bed. "Ain't a short story, but I'll try'tell it dat way."

He told her about M&N Bodywork, how he and DJ Tank had been staking it out to use as the crew's new crib. He told her about seeing the armed men there one night and how he and DJ Tank had sneaked in after the men had left, what they'd found, "the plastic explosive an s.h.i.t." He told her about coming upon the couple-the man and the woman-sawing up a man's body.

"My G.o.d." Soraya stopped him there. "Can you describe the man and woman?"

He began, painting frighteningly accurate word pictures of the false Lindros and Anne Held. How little we know people, Soraya thought bitterly. How easily they fool us.

"Okay," she said at length, "what happened then?"

"They set fire to the building. Burn it to the f.u.c.kin' ground."

Soraya considered. "So by that time the explosives had been moved."

"True dat." Tyrone nodded. "There's sumpin else, too. Those two s.h.i.tbirds I pulled offa you over Ninth and Florida? I recognized one a them. He were a guard that night outside that body shop."

Thirty-two.

MUTA IBN AZIZ had begun to stir during the latter part of the aerial dogfight. Now Bourne became aware that he had regained his feet. He couldn't relinquish the controls in order to engage the terrorist, so he had to find another way to deal with Muta.

The Sovereign was nearing the end of the mountain chasm. As Muta ibn Aziz put the muzzle of the gun against his right ear, Bourne directed the Sovereign toward the mountain peak at the end of the chasm.

"What are you doing?" Muta said.

"Put the gun away," Bourne said while focusing on the peak rising up in front of them.

Muta stared out the windshield, mesmerized. "Get us out of here."

Bourne kept the nose of the Sovereign headed directly for the peak.

"You're going to kill us both." Muta licked his lips nervously. All at once he lifted the gun away from Bourne's head. "All right, all right! Just-"

They were terrifyingly close to the mountain.

"Throw the gun across the c.o.c.kpit," Bourne ordered.

"You've left it too late," Muta ibn Aziz cried. "We'll never make it!"

Bourne kept his hands steady on the yoke. With a shout of disgust, Muta tossed his gun across the floor.

Bourne pulled back on the yoke. The Sovereign whooshed upward. The mountain rushed at them with appalling speed. It was going to be close, very close. At the last instant Bourne saw the gap in the right side, as if the hand of G.o.d had reached down and cracked off half the mountaintop. He banked a precise amount; any farther and the pa.s.sing crag would snap off the right wingtip. They pa.s.sed just above the mountaintop, then, still climbing, pulled free of the chasm, blasting into blue sky.

Muta, on hands and knees, went scrabbling after the gun. Bourne was ready for this. He'd already engaged the autopilot. Unstrapping himself, he leapt onto the terrorist's back, delivered a savage kidney punch. With a muted scream, Muta collapsed onto the c.o.c.kpit floor.

Quickly, Bourne took possession of the gun, then bound the terrorist in a coil of wire he found in the engineer's locker. Dragging him back across the c.o.c.kpit, he returned to the pilot's chair, disengaged the autopilot, adjusted the heading a bit more south. They were halfway across Afghanistan now, heading for Miran Shah, just across the eastern border in Pakistan, the place circled on the pilot's map Bourne had studied.

Muta ibn Aziz expelled a long string of Bedouin curses.

"Bourne," he added, "I was right. You manufactured the story of your own death."

Bourne grinned at him. "Shall we call everyone by their real name? Let's start with Abu Ghazi Nadir al-Jamuh ibn Hamid ibn Ashef al-Wahhib. But Fadi is so much shorter and to the point."

"How could you possibly know-?"

"I also know that his brother, Karim, has taken Martin Lindros's place."

The shock showed in Muta's dark eyes.

"And then there's the sister, Sarah ibn Ashef." With grim satisfaction, Bourne watched the messenger's expression. "Yes, I know about that, too."

Muta's face was ashen. "She told you her name?"

At once Bourne understood. "You were there that night in Odessa when we had the rendezvous set up with our contact. I shot Sarah ibn Ashef as she ran into the square. We barely managed to escape the trap with our lives."

"You took her," Muta ibn Aziz said. "You took Sarah ibn Ashef with you."

"She was still alive," Bourne said.

"Did she say anything?"

Muta said this so quickly, Bourne knew that he was desperate for the answer. Why? There was more here than Bourne knew. What was he missing?

He was at the very end of what was known to him. But it was vital that he keep his opponent believing that he knew more than he did. He decided the best course was to say nothing.

The silence worked on Muta, who became extremely agitated. "She said my name, didn't she?"

Bourne kept his voice neutral. "Why would she do that?"

"She did, didn't she?" Muta was frantic now, twisting this way and that in a vain attempt to free himself. "What else did she say?"

"I don't remember."

"You must remember."

He had Muta ibn Aziz. All that remained was to reel him in. "I saw a doctor once who said that descriptions of things I'd forgotten-even fragments-could unlock those memories."

They were nearing the border. He started the gradual descent that took them down to the hogback ridges of the mountain chain that did such an expert job at hiding many of the world's most dangerous terrorist cadres.

Muta stared at him incredulously. "Let me get this straight. You want me to help you." He gave a joyless laugh. "I don't think so."

"All right." Bourne turned his full attention on the topography as it began to reveal its gross details. "It was you who asked. I don't care one way or another, really."

Muta's face contorted first one way, then another. He was under some form of terrible pressure, and Bourne wondered what it was. Outwardly he gave no sign that he cared, but he felt he needed to up the ante, so he said, "Six minutes to landing, maybe a little less. You'd better brace yourself as best you can." Glancing over at Muta ibn Aziz, he laughed. "Oh, yeah, you're already strapped in."

And then Muta said, "It wasn't an accident."

"Unfortunately," Karim said, "LaValle was right."

The DCI flinched. Clearly he didn't want to hear more bad news. "Typhon routinely piggybacks on CI transmissions."

"True enough, sir. But after some backbreaking electronic spadework, I discovered three piggybacked communiques I can't account for."

They sat side by side in the sixth pew on the right arm of the arc inside the Foundry Methodist Church on 16th Street NW. Behind them, affixed to the back, was a plaque that read: IN THIS PEW, SIDE BY SIDE, SAT PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL AT THE NATIONAL CHRISTMAS SERVICE IN 1941. Which meant that the service had taken place just three weeks after the j.a.panese attack on Pearl Harbor-dark days, indeed, for America. As for Britain, it had gained, through a painful disaster, an important ally. This spot, therefore, held great meaning for the Old Man. It was where he came to pray, to gain insight, the moral strength to do the dark and difficult deeds he was often required to do.

As he stared down at the dossier his second in command had handed him, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that another of those deeds lay dead ahead of him.

He let out a long breath, opened the dossier. And there it was in black and white: the fearsome truth. Still, he raised his head, said in an unsteady voice, "Anne?"

"I'm afraid so, sir." Karim was careful to keep his hands palms up in his lap. He needed to seem as devastated as the Old Man clearly was. The news had shaken the DCI to his roots. "All three communiques came from a PDA in her possession. One not CI-authorized, one we had no knowledge of until now. It seems she was also able to replace and doctor intel, falsely implicating Tim Hytner."