The Bourne Sanction Part 13

"You might as well kill me now," she said in her little-girl voice. "I won't tolerate your abuse anymore."

Arkadin pulled her back inside the room, let go of her. "What are you going to do," he said with a smirk, "jump out the window?"

No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than she walked calmly to the window and sat on the sash, staring at him all the time. Then she tipped herself backward, through the open window. Arkadin grabbed her around the legs and hauled her up from the brink.

They stood glaring at each other, breathing fast, hearts pumping with excess adrenaline.

"Yesterday, while we were on the ladder, told me that you had nothing much to live for," Devra said. "That pretty much goes for me, too. So here we both are, brothers under the skin, with nothing but each other."

"How do I know the next link in the network is Turkey?"

She drew her hair back from her face. "I'm tired of lying to you," she said. "It's like lying to myself. What's the point?"

"Talk is cheap," he said.

"Then I'll prove it to you. When we get to Turkey I'll take you to the doc.u.ment."

Arkadin, trying not to think too much about what she said, nodded his acknowledgment of their uneasy truce. "I won't lay a hand on you again."

Except to kill you, he thought.

Twelve.

THE FREER GALLERY of Art stood on the south side of the Mall, bounded on the west by the Washington Monument and on the east by the Reflecting Pool, gateway to the immense Capitol building. It was situated on the corner of Jefferson Drive and 12th Street, SW, near the western edge of the Mall.

The building, a Florentine Renaissance palazzo faced with Stony Creek granite imported from Connecticut, had been commissioned by Charles Freer to house his enormous collection of Near East and East Asian art. The main entrance on the north side of the building where the meet was to take place consisted of three arches accented by Doric pilasters surrounding a central loggia. Because its architecture looked inward, many critics felt it was a rather forbidding facade, especially when compared with the nearby exuberance of the National Gallery of Art.

Nevertheless, the Freer was the preeminent museum of its kind in the country, and Soraya loved it not only for the depth of art it housed but also for the elegant lines of the palazzo itself. She especially loved the contained open s.p.a.ce at its entrance, and the fact that even, as now, when the Mall was agitated with hordes of tourists heading to and from the Smithsonian Metro rail stop on 12th Street, the Freer itself was an oasis of calm and tranquility. When things boiled over in the office during the day, it was to the Freer she came to decompress. Ten minutes with Sung dynasty jades and lacquers acted like a soothing balm to her soul.

Approaching the north side of the Mall, she searched past the crowds outside the entrance to the Freer and thought she saw-among the st.u.r.dy men with their hard, clipped Midwestern accents, the scampering children and their laughing mothers, the vacant-eyed teenagers plugged into their iPods-Veronica Hart's long, elegant figure walking past the entrance, then doubling back.

She stepped off the curb, but the blare of a horn from an oncoming car startled her back onto the sidewalk. It was at that moment that her cell phone buzzed.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Bourne said in her ear.

"Jason?"

"Why are you coming to this meet?"

Foolishly, she looked around; she'd never be able to spot him, and she knew it.

"Hart invited me. I need to talk to you. The DCI and I both do."

"About what?"

Soraya took a deep breath. "Typhon's listening posts have picked up a series of disturbing communications pointing to an imminent terrorist attack on an East Coast city. The trouble is, that's all we have. Worse, the communications are between two cadres of a group about which we have no intel whatsoever. It was my idea to recruit you to find them and stop the attack."

"Not much to go on," Bourne said. "Doesn't matter. The group's name is the Black Legion."

"In grad school I studied the link between a branch of Muslim extremism and the Third Reich. But this can't be the same Black Legion. They were either killed or disbanded when n.a.z.i Germany fell."

"It can and it is," Bourne said. "I don't know how it managed to survive, but it did. Three of their members tried to kidnap Professor Specter this morning. I saw their device tattooed on the gunman's arm."

"The three horses' heads joined by the death's head?"

"Yes." Bourne described the incident in detail. "Check the body at the morgue."

"I'll do that," Soraya said. "But how could the Black Legion remain so far underground all this time without being detected?"

"They have a powerful international front," Bourne said. "The Eastern Brotherhood."

"That sounds far-fetched," Soraya said. "The Eastern Brotherhood is in the forefront of IslamicWestern relations."

"Nevertheless, my source is unimpeachable."

"G.o.d in heaven, what've you been doing while you've been away from CI?"

"I was never in CI," Bourne said brusquely, "and here's just one reason why. You say you want to talk with me but I doubt you need half a dozen agents to do that."

Soraya froze. "Agents?" She was on the Mall itself now, and she had to restrain herself from looking around again. "There are no CI agents here."

"How d'you know that?"

"Hart would've told me-"

"Why should she tell you anything? We go way back, you and I."

"That's true enough." She kept walking. "But something happened earlier today that makes me believe the agents you've spotted are NSA." She described the way she and Hart had been shadowed from CI HQ to the restaurant. She told him about Secretary Halliday and Luther LaValle, both of whom were gunning to make CI a part of the Pentagon clandestine service.

"That might make sense," Bourne said, "if there were only two of them. But six? No, there's another agenda, one neither of us knows about."

"Such as?"

"The agents are vectored perfectly, triangulated on the entrance to the Freer," Bourne said. "This means that they must have had foreknowledge of the meet. It also means the six weren't sent to shadow Veronica Hart. If they aren't here for her, they must have been sent for me. This is Hart's doing."

Soraya felt a chill crawl down her spine. What if the DCI was lying to her? What if she meant all along to lead Bourne into a trap? It would make sense for one of her first official acts as DCI to be the capture of Jason Bourne. It certainly would put her in solidly with Rob Batt and the others who despised and feared Bourne, and who resented her. Plus, capturing Jason would score her big points with the president and prevent Secretary Halliday from building on his already considerable influence. Still, why would Hart have allowed Soraya to possibly muck up her first field op by coming along? No, she had to believe this was an NSA initiative.

"I don't believe that," she said emphatically.

"Let's say you're right. The other possibility is just as dire. If Hart didn't set the trap, then there's someone highly placed in CI who did. I went to Hart directly with the request."

"Yes," she said, "using my cell, thank you very much."

"Did you find it? You're on a new one now."

"It was in the gutter where you tossed it."

"Then stop complaining," Bourne said, not unkindly. "I can't imagine Hart told too many people about this meet, but one of them is working against her, and if that's the case chances are he's been recruited by LaValle."

If Bourne was right . . . But of course he was. "You're the grand prize, Jason. If LaValle can take you down when no one in CI could, he'll be a hero. Taking over CI will be a cakewalk for him after that." Soraya felt perspiration break out at her hairline. "Under the circ.u.mstances," she continued, "I think you ought to withdraw."

"I need to see the correspondence between Martin and Moira. And if Hart is instigating this trap, then she'll never give me access to the files at another time. I'll have to take my chances, but not until you're certain Hart has the material."

Soraya, who was almost at the entrance, expelled a long breath. "Jason, I found the conversations. I can tell you what's in them."

"Do you think you could quote them to me verbatim?" he said. "Anyway, it's not that simple. Karim al-Jamil doctored hundreds of files before he left. I know the method he used to alter them. I have to see them myself."

"I see there's no way I can talk you out of this."

"Right," Bourne said. "When you've made sure the material is genuine, beep my cell once. Then I need you to move Hart into the loggia, away from the entrance proper."

"Why?" she said. "That'll only make it more difficult for you to-Jason?"

But Bourne had already disconnected.

From his vantage point on the roof of the Forrestal Building on Independence Avenue, Bourne tracked his high-powered night-vision gla.s.ses from Soraya as she moved toward the DCI, past clots of tourists hurrying about, to the agents in place around the west end of the Mall. Two lounged, chatting, at the northeast corner of the Department of Agriculture North Building. Another, hands in the pockets of his trench coat, was crossing diagonally southwest from Madison Drive toward the Smithsonian. A fourth was behind the wheel of an illegally parked car on Const.i.tution Avenue. In fact, he was the one who'd given the game away. Bourne had spotted the car illegally parked just before a Metro police cruiser stopped parallel to it. Windows were rolled down, a conversation ensued. ID was briefly flashed by the driver of the illegally parked car. The cruiser rolled on.

The fifth and sixth agents were east of the Freer, one approximately midway between Madison and Jefferson drives, the other in front of the Arts Industries Building. He knew there had to be at least one more.

It was almost five o'clock. A short winter twilight had descended, aided by the twinkling lights wound festively around lampposts. With the location of each agent memorized Bourne returned to the ground, using the window ledges for hands and feet.

The moment he showed himself the agents would start moving. Estimating the distance they were from where the DCI and Soraya stood, he calculated he'd have no more than two minutes with Hart to get the files.

Hidden in shadows, waiting for Soraya's signal, he strained to pick out the remaining agents. They couldn't afford to leave Independence Avenue unguarded. If Hart didn't in fact have the files, then he'd do as Soraya first suggested and get out of the area without being spotted.

He imagined her at the entrance to the Freer, talking with the DCI. There would be the first nervous moment of acknowledgment, then Soraya would have to direct the conversation around to the files. She'd have to find a way for Hart to show them to her, to make sure they were authentic.

His phone beeped once and was still. The files were authentic.

He accessed the Internet, navigating to the DC Metro site, checked the up-to-the-minute transit schedules, checking his options. This procedure took longer than he would have liked. The very real and immediate danger was that one of the six agents was in contact with home base-either CI or the Pentagon-whose sophisticated electronic telemetry could pinpoint his phone and, worse, spy on what he was pulling up from the Net. Couldn't be helped, however. Access had to be made on site and at the immediate moment in case of unforeseen transit delays. He put the worry out of his head, concentrated on what he'd have to do. The next five minutes were crucial.

Time to go.

Moments after Soraya secretly contacted Bourne she said to Veronica Hart, "I'm afraid we may have a problem."

The DCI's head whipped around. She'd been scanning the area for any sign of Bourne's presence. The crowds around the Freer had thickened as many made their way to the Smithsonian Metro station around the corner, returning to their hotels to prepare for dinner.

"What kind of problem?"

"I think I saw one of the NSA shadows we picked up at lunch."

"h.e.l.l, I don't want LaValle knowing I'm meeting with Bourne. He'll have a fit, go running to the president." She turned. "I think we ought to leave before Bourne gets here."

"What about my intel?" Soraya said. "What chance are we going to have without him? I say let's stay and talk to him. Showing him the material will go a long way toward winning his trust."

The DCI was clearly on edge. "I don't like any of this."

"Time is of the essence." Soraya took her by the elbow. "Let's move back here," she said, indicating the loggia. "We'll be out of the shadow's line of sight."

Hart reluctantly walked into the open s.p.a.ce. The loggia was especially crowded with people milling about, discussing the art they'd just seen, their plans for dinner and the next day. The gallery closed at five thirty, so the building was starting to clear out.

"Where the h.e.l.l is he, anyway?" Hart said testily.

"He'll be here," Soraya a.s.sured her. "He wants the material."

"Of course he wants it. The material concerns his friend."

"Clearing Martin's name is extremely important to him."

"I was speaking of Moira Trevor," the DCI said.

Before Soraya could form a reply, a group of people spewed out of the front doors. Bourne was in the middle of them. Soraya could see him, but he was shielded from anyone across the street.

"Here he is," she muttered as Bourne came quickly and silently up behind them. He must have somehow gotten into the Independence Avenue entrance at the south side of the building, closed to the public, made his way through the galleries to the front.

The DCI turned, impaling Bourne with a penetrating gaze. "So you came after all."

"I said I would."

He didn't blink, didn't move at all. Soraya thought that he was at his most terrifying then, the sheer force of his will at its peak.

"You have something for me."

"I said you could read it." The DCI held out a small manila envelope.

Bourne took it. "I regret I haven't the time to do that here."

He whirled, snaking through the crowd, vanishing inside the Freer.

"Wait!" Hart cried. "Wait!"

But it was too late, and in any event three NSA agents came walking rapidly through the entrance. Their progress was slowed by the people exiting the gallery, but they pushed many of them aside. They trotted past the DCI and Soraya as if they didn't exist. A third agent appeared, took up position just inside the loggia. He stared at them and smiled thinly.

Bourne moved as quickly as he thought prudent through the interior. Having memorized it from the visitors' brochure and come through it once already, he did not waste a step. But one thing worried him. He hadn't seen any agents on his way in. That meant, more than likely, he'd have to deal with them on the way out.

Near the rear entrance, a guard was checking galleries just before closing time. Bourne was obliged to detour around a corner with an outcropping of a fire call box and extinguisher. He could hear the guard's soft voice as he herded a family toward the exit in front. Bourne was about to slip out when he heard other voices sharper, clipped. Moving into shadow, he saw a pair of slim, white-haired Chinese scholars in pin-striped suits and shiny brogues arguing the merits of a Tang porcelain vase. Their voices faded along with their footsteps as they headed toward Jefferson Drive.

Without losing another instant Bourne checked the bypa.s.s he'd made on the alarm system. So far it showed everything as normal. He pushed out the door. Night wind struck his face as he saw two agents, sidearms drawn, hurrying up the granite stairs. He had just enough time to register the oddness of the guns before he ducked back inside, went directly to the fire call box.

They came through the door. The leading one got a face full of fire-smothering foam. Bourne ducked a wild shot from the second agent. There was virtually no noise, but something pinged off the Tennessee white marble wall near his shoulder, then clattered to the floor. He hurled the fire extinguisher at the shooter. It struck him on the temple and he went down. Bourne broke the call box's gla.s.s, pulled hard on the red metal handle. Instantly the fire alarm sounded, piercing every corner of the gallery.

Out the door, Bourne ran diagonally down the steps, heading west, directly for 12th Street, SW. He expected to find more agents at the southwest corner of the building, but as he turned off Independence Avenue onto 12th Street he encountered a flood of people drawn to the building by the alarm. Already the sirens of fire trucks could be heard floating through the rising chatter of the crowd.