The Bourne Betrayal Part 5

He swerved around a minivan. "Did Hytner make it?"

"Tim's dead because of you, you sonovab.i.t.c.h."

The chopper landed on the island rotary, and the infernal noise level dropped abruptly as the pilot cut the motor. The black Hummer kept on going as if nothing were amiss. Bourne, threading his way through the last of the traffic between him and his quarry, once again drew close to the vehicle.

He saw Soraya and two other CI agents emerge from the body of the helicopter with police riot helmets on their heads and shotguns in their hands. Swerving abruptly, he drew alongside the Hummer. With his c.o.c.ked elbow, he smashed the driver's-side window.

"Pull over!" he shouted. "Pull over onto the rotary or you'll be shot dead!"

A second helicopter appeared over the Potomac, angling in very fast toward their position. CI backup.

The Hummer gave no indication of slowing. Without taking his eyes off the road, Bourne reached behind him and opened the custom saddlebag. His scrabbling fingers found a wrench. He'd have one chance, he knew. Calculating vectors and speed, he threw the wrench. It slammed into the front of the driver's-side rear-wheel well. The wheel, revolving at speed, went over the wrench, launched it up with sickening power into the rear-wheel a.s.sembly.

At once the Hummer began to wobble, which only jammed the wrench deeper into the a.s.sembly. Then something cracked, an axle possibly, and the Hummer decelerated in a barely controlled spin. Mostly on its own momentum, it ran up over the curb onto the rotary and came to a stop, its engine ticking like a clock.

Soraya and the other agents spread out, moving toward the Hummer with drawn guns aimed at the pa.s.senger cabin. When she was close enough, Soraya shot the two front tires flat. One of the other agents did the same with the rear tires. The Hummer wasn't going anywhere until a CI tow truck hauled it back to HQ for forensics.

"All right!" Soraya shouted. "Out of the vehicle, all of you! Out of the vehicle now!"

As the agents closed the circle around the Hummer, Bourne could see that they were wearing body armor. After Hytner's death, Soraya wasn't taking any chances.

They were within ten meters of the Hummer when Bourne felt his scalp begin to tingle. Something was wrong with the scene, but he couldn't quite put his mental finger on it. He looked again: Everything seemed right-the target surrounded, the approaching agents, the second helicopter hovering above, the noise level rising exponentially...

Then he had it.

Oh, my G.o.d, he thought, and viciously twisted the handlebar accelerator. He yelled at the agents, but over the noise of the two copters and his own motorcycle there was no chance they could hear him. Soraya was in the lead, closing in on the driver's door as the others, spread apart, hung back, providing her with a crossfire of cover should she need it.

The setup looked fine, perfect, in fact, but it wasn't.

Bourne leaned forward as the motorcycle sped across the rotary. He had a hundred meters to cover, a route that would take him just left of the Hummer's gleaming flank. He took his right hand off the handlebar grip, gesturing frantically at the agents, but they were properly concentrated on their target.

He gunned the engine, its deep, guttural roar at last cutting through the heavy vibrational thwup-thwup-thwup of the hovering copter. One of the agents saw him coming, watched him gesturing. He called to the other agent, who glanced at Bourne as he roared past the Hummer.

The setup looked right out of the CI playbook, but it wasn't, because the Hummer's engine was ticking over-cooling-while it was still running. Impossible.

Soraya was less than five meters from the target, her body tense, in a semi-crouch. Her eyes opened wide as she became aware of him. Then he was upon her.

He swept her up in his extended right arm, swung her back behind him as he raced off. One of the other agents, now flat on the ground, had alerted the second chopper, because it abruptly rose into the spangled night, swinging away.

The ticking Bourne had heard hadn't come from the engine at all. It was from a triggering device.

The explosion took the Hummer apart, turned its components into smoking shrapnel, shrieked behind them. Bourne, with the motorcycle at full speed, felt Soraya's arms wrap around his ribs. He bent low over the handlebars, feeling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressing softly against his back as she molded herself to him. The howling air was blast-furnace hot; the sky, bright orange, then clogged with oily black smoke. A hail of ruptured metal whirred and whizzed all around them, plowed into the ground, struck the roadway, fizzed into the river, shriveling.

Jason Bourne, with Soraya Moore clinging tightly to him, accelerated into the light-glare of monument-laden D.C.

Four.

JAKOB SILVER and his brother appeared from out of the dinnertime night, when even cities such as Washington appear deserted or, at least, lonely, a certain indigo melancholy robbing the streets of life. When the two men entered the hushed luxury of the Hotel Const.i.tution on the northeast corner of 20th and F Streets, Thomas, the desk clerk on duty, hurried past the fluted marble columns and across the expanse of luxurious carpeting to meet them.

He had good reason to scurry. He, as well as the other desk clerks, had been given a crisp new hundred-dollar bill by Lev Silver, Jakob Silver's brother, when he had checked in. These Jewish diamond merchants from Amsterdam were wealthy men, this much the desk clerk had surmised. The Silvers were to be treated with the utmost respect and care, befitting their exalted status.

Thomas, a small, mousy, damp-handed man, could see that Jakob Silver's face was flushed as if in victory. It was Thomas's job to antic.i.p.ate his VIP clients' needs.

"Mr. Silver, my name is Thomas. It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," he said. "Is there anything I might get for you?"

"That you may, Thomas," Jakob Silver replied. "A bottle of your best champagne."

"And have the Pakistani," Lev Silver added, "what's his name-?"

"Omar, Mr. Silver."

"Ah, yes, Omar. I like him. Have him bring up the champagne."

"Very good." Thomas all but bowed from the waist. "Right away, Mr. Silver."

He hurried away as the Silver brothers entered the elevator, a plush cubicle that silently whisked them up to the executive-level fifth floor.

"How did it go?" Lev Silver said.

And Jakob Silver answered, "It worked to perfection."

Inside their suite, he shrugged off his coat and jacket, went directly into the bathroom, and turned on all the lights. Behind him, in the sitting room, he heard the TV start up. He stripped off his sweat-stained shirt.

In the pink-marble bathroom, everything was prepared.

Jakob Silver, naked to the waist, bent over the marble sink and took out his gold eyes. Tall, with the build of a former rugby player, he was as fit as an Olympian: washboard abdomen, muscular shoulders, powerful limbs. Snapping closed the plastic case in which he had carefully placed the gold contact lenses, he looked into the bathroom mirror. Beyond his reflection, he could see a good chunk of the cream-and-silver suite. He heard the low drone of CNN. Then the channel was switched to Fox News, then MSNBC.

"Nothing." Muta ibn Aziz's vibrant tenor voice emerged from the other room. Muta ibn Aziz had picked his cover name-Lev-himself. "On any of the all-news stations."

"And there won't be," Jakob Silver said. "CI is extremely efficient in manipulating the media."

Now Muta ibn Aziz appeared in the mirror, one hand gripping the door frame to the bathroom, the other out of sight behind him. Dark hair and eyes, a cla.s.sic Semitic face, a zealous and inextinguishable resolve, he was Abbud ibn Aziz's younger brother.

Muta dragged a chair behind him, which he set down opposite the toilet. After glancing at himself in the mirror, he said: "We look naked without our beards."

"This is America." He gestured curtly with his head. "Go back inside."

Alone again, Jakob Silver allowed himself to think like Fadi. He had jettisoned the ident.i.ty of Hiram Cevik the moment he and Muta had exited the black Hummer. Muta, as previously instructed, had left the Beretta semiautomatic pistol with its ugly M9SD Suppressor on the front seat as they had tumbled onto the sidewalk. His aim had been true, but then he'd never had a doubt about Muta ibn Aziz's marksmanship.

They had run out of sight as the Hummer sped up again, slipped around a corner, and walked quickly up 20th Street to F Street, vanishing like wraiths inside the warmly glowing facade of the hotel.

Meanwhile, not a mile away, Ahmad, with his load of C-4 explosives that had filled up the front foot well of the Hummer's cabin, was already martyred, already in Paradise. A hero to his family, his people.

"Your objective is to take out as many of them as you can," Fadi had told him when Ahmad had volunteered to martyr himself. In truth, there had been many volunteers, with very little difference among them. All were absolutely reliable. Fadi had chosen Ahmad because he was a cousin. One of a great many, admittedly, but Fadi had owed his uncle a small favor, which this decision repaid.

Fadi dug into his mouth and removed the porcelain tooth sheaths he'd used to widen Hiram Cevik's jaw. Washing them with soap and water, he returned them to the hard-sided case that merchants used to transport gems and jewelry. Muta had thoughtfully placed it on the generous rim of the bathtub so that everything in it would be within easy reach: a warren of small trays and custom compartments filled with every manner of theatrical makeup, removers, spirit gums, wigs, colored contact lenses, and various prosthetics for noses, jaws, teeth, and ears.

Squeezing a solvent onto a broad cotton pad, he methodically wiped the makeup off his face, neck, and hands. His natural, sun-darkened skin reappeared in streaks, a good decade peeled away, until the Fadi he recognized was whole again. A short time as himself, precious as a jewel, in the center of the enemy camp. Then he and Muta ibn Aziz would be gone, lifting through the clouds to their next destination.

He dried his face and hands on a towel and went back into the sitting room of the suite where Muta stood, watching The Sopranos on HBO.

"I find myself repelled by this creature Carmela, the leader's wife," he said.

"As well you should. Look at her bare arms!"

Carmela was standing at the open door to her obscenely huge house, watching her obscenely huge husband get into his obscenely huge Cadillac Escalade.

"And their daughter has s.e.x before her marriage. Why doesn't Tony kill her, as the law dictates. An honor killing, so that he and his family's honor won't be dragged through the mud." In a fit of disgust, Muta ibn Aziz went over to the TV, switched it off.

"We strive to inculcate in our women the wisdom of Muhammad, the Quran, the true faith as their guides," Fadi said. "This American woman is an infidel. She has nothing, she is nothing."

There came then a discreet knock on the door.

"Omar," Muta said. "Let me."

Fadi gave his silent a.s.sent before he slipped back into the bathroom.

Muta crossed the plush carpet and drew open the door for Omar to enter. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of no more than forty, with a shaven head, a quick smile, and a penchant for telling incomprehensible jokes. On his shoulder was a silver tray laden with a bottle in an enormous ice bucket, two flutes, and a plate of freshly sliced fruit. Omar filled the doorway, Muta thought, much as Fadi would, for the two men were of the same approximate height and weight.

"Your champagne," Omar said superfluously. Crossing the room, he set his burden down on the gla.s.s top of the c.o.c.ktail table. The ice made a shivery sound as he pulled the bottle free.

"I'll open it," Muta said, grasping the heavy champagne bottle from the waiter.

When Omar proffered the leather-bound folder with the chit to sign, Muta called, "Jakob, the champagne's here. You must sign."

"Tell Omar to come into the bathroom."

Even so, Omar looked at the other questioningly.

"Go on." Muta ibn Aziz smiled winningly. "I a.s.sure you, he won't bite."

With the small leather folder held before him like an offering, Omar plodded toward the sound of Fadi's voice.

Muta dropped the bottle back into its bed of shaved ice. He had no idea what champagne tasted like and wasn't in the least interested. When he heard the sudden loud noise from the bathroom, he used the remote to turn the TV back on, cranking up the volume. Switching channels because The Sopranos was over, he stopped when he recognized the face of Jack Nicholson. The actor's voice filled the room.

"Here's Johnny!" Nicholson crowed through the rent in the bathroom door he'd made with an ax.

Omar, his hands tied behind his back, was bound to the chair in the bathtub. His large brown liquid eyes were staring up at Fadi. There was an ugly bruise on his jaw just beginning to inflate.

"You're not Jewish," Omar said in Urdu. "You're Muslim."

Fadi ignored him and went about his business, which, at the moment, was death.

"You're Muslim, just like me," Omar repeated. To his utter surprise, he wasn't frightened. He seemed to be in something of a dream state, as if from the moment he was born he was fated for this encounter. "How can you do this?"

"In a moment, you will be martyred to the cause," Fadi said in Urdu, which his father had made certain he learned as a child. "What is your complaint?"

"The cause," Omar said calmly, "is your cause. It isn't mine. Islam is a religion of peace, and yet here you are waging a terrible, b.l.o.o.d.y war that devastates families, whole generations."

"We are given no choice by the American terrorists. They suck at our oil t.i.t, but that isn't enough for them. They want to own the oil t.i.t. So they make up lies and use them to invade our land. The American president claims, of course falsely, that his G.o.d has spoken to him. The Americans have revived the era of the Crusades. They are the world's chief infidels-where they lead Europe follows, either willingly or grudgingly. America is like a colossal engine rolling across the world, its citizens grinding whatever they find into s.h.i.t that all looks the same. If we don't stop them, they will be the end of us. They want nothing less. Our backs are against the wall. We have been driven into this war of survival, unwilling. They have systematically stripped us of power, of dignity. Now they want to occupy all of the Middle East."

"You speak with a terrible hatred."

"A gift of the Americans. Cleanse yourself of all Western corruption."

"And I say that as long as your focus is hatred, you're doomed. Your hatred has blinded you to any possibility but the one you have created."

A tremor of barely suppressed rage rippled through Fadi. "I have created nothing! I am defending what must be defended. Why can you not see that our very way of life hangs in the balance."

"It is you who cannot see. There is another way."

Fadi threw his head back, his voice corrosive. "Ah, yes, now you have opened my eyes, Omar. I shall renounce my people, my heritage. I will become like you, a servant waiting on the decadent whims of pampered Americans, dependent on the crumbs left on their table."

"You see only what you want to see." Omar's expression was sad. "You've only to look at the Israeli model to know what can be done with hard work and-"

"The Israelis have the money and the military might of America behind them," Fadi hissed into Omar's face. "They also have the atomic bomb."

"Of course, that is what you see. But Israelis themselves are n.o.bel laureates in physics, economics, chemistry, literature; prizewinners in quantum computing, black-hole thermodynamics, string theory. Israelis were founders of Packard Bell, Oracle, SanDisk, Akamai, Mercury Interactive, Check Point, Amdocs, ICQ."

"You're talking gibberish," Fadi said, dismissively.

"To you, yes. Because all you know how to do is destroy. These people created a life for themselves, for their children, for their children's children. This is the model you need to follow. Turn inward, help your people, educate them, allow them to make something of themselves."

"You're insane," Fadi said in fury. "Never. Finished. The end." The flat of his hand cut through the air. It held a shining blade that slit Omar's throat from side to side.

With a last look at Nicholson's manically grinning face, Muta ibn Aziz followed Omar into the grotesque pink-marble bathroom, which looked to him like flesh after the skin had been stripped off. There was Omar, sitting on the chair he had placed in the bathtub. There was Fadi bent over, studying Omar's face as if to memorize it. Fadi's makeup case had been overturned when Omar had kicked it during his death throes. Small jars, broken bottles, prosthetics were all over the place. Not that it mattered.

"He looks so sad, slumped there on the chair," Muta said.

"He's beyond sadness," Fadi said. "He's beyond all pain and pleasure."

Muta stared into Omar's gla.s.sy eyes, the pupils fixed and dilated in death. "You broke his neck. So neat, so precise."

Fadi sat down on the lip of the tub. After a moment's hesitation, Muta retrieved an electric hair shearer from the tile floor. Fadi had affixed a mirror to the wall at the back of the tub by means of suction cups. He stared into this, scrutinizing every motion, as Muta began to take off his hair.

When the task was done, Fadi rose. He stared at himself in the mirror over the sink, then back at Omar. He turned to one side, and Muta moved Omar's head so the same side was visible. Then the other side.

"A little more here-" Fadi pointed at a spot on the top of his own scalp. "-where Omar is already bald."

When he was satisfied, he began to give himself Omar's nose, Omar's slight overbite, Omar's elongated earlobes.