Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

25

THERE WAS NO HELP for it, Bourne thought, now that Tracy had noticed. Soraya and the Egyptian were only paces away, so Bourne strode up to Soraya.

— Hello, sis, he said, kissing her warmly on both cheeks. Then, before she had time to respond, he turned to her companion and held out his hand.

— Adam Stone. I‘m Soraya‘s half brother.

The Egyptian shook his hand briefly. -Amun Chalthoum. But his eyebrows shot up. -I didn‘t know Soraya had a brother.

Bourne‘s laugh was easy. -I‘m the black sheep, I‘m afraid. No one in the family likes to talk about me.

By this time Tracy had come up beside him, and he introduced everyone.

Taking him up on his cue, Soraya said to him, — There‘s a problem with Mom‘s health I think you ought to know about.

— Excuse us a moment, would you? Bourne said to Tracy and Chalthoum.

When the two of them were far enough away to afford them ade-quate privacy, Soraya said, — Jason, what the hell? She was still looking at him as if she couldn‘t quite believe what her eyes were telling her.

— It‘s a long story, he said, — and we don‘t have the time now. He led Soraya a few more paces away from the other two. -Arkadin is still alive. He almost succeeded in killing me on Bali.

— No wonder you don‘t want anyone to know you‘re still alive.

Bourne glanced at Chalthoum. -What are you doing here with that Egyptian?

— Amun‘s with Egyptian intelligence. We‘re trying to find out who actually shot down the American jet.

— I thought the Iranians-

— Our forensics team determined that it was an Iranian Kowsar 3 missile that brought down the plane, Soraya said, — but now, inexplicably, it looks as if a cadre of four American military men might have brought it into Egypt through Sudan. That‘s why we‘re on our way to Khartoum.

Bourne could feel the strands of the spiderweb coming into sudden focus, and he bent toward Soraya as he said softly and urgently, — Listen carefully. Whatever Arkadin is up to involves both Nikolai Yevsen and Black River. I‘ve been wondering what would bring these three together. It could be that the cadre you‘re looking for aren‘t military per se, but are Black River personnel. He directed her attention to the red-and-white jet where he and Tracy had been headed. -Air Afrika is rumored to be owned by Yevsen, which would make sense-he needs a way to transship the illegal arms consignments to his clients.

While Soraya studied the plane, he continued: — If you‘re right about the American cadre, then where do you think they could possibly obtain an Iranian Kowsar 3 missile-from the Iranians themselves? He shook his head. -Yevsen is probably the only arms dealer in the world with enough contacts and power to get one.

— But why would Black River-?

— Black River‘s only there to do the heavy lifting, Bourne said. -It‘s whoever hired them that‘s guiding everything. You‘ve read the headlines. I think someone high up in the US government wants to go to war with Iran. You‘ll know better than me who it might be.

— Bud Halliday, Soraya said. -The secretary of defense.

— Halliday‘s the one who ordered my death.

She goggled at him for a moment. -Right now this is all speculation, so it‘s nothing I can use. I need proof of these connections, so we‘ll need to stay in touch. I‘m reachable on a sat phone, she said at length, and rattled off a string of numbers for him to memorize. He nodded, giving her the number of his own sat phone, and was about to break away when she said, — There‘s something else. DCI Hart has been killed by a car bomb. A man named M. Errol Danziger is the new DCI and he‘s already recalled me from the field.

— An order you‘re clearly refusing to obey. Good for you.

Soraya grimaced. -Who knows what kind of trouble it‘s going to get me into. She took his arm. -Jason, listen, this is the hardest part. For some reason Moira was with DCI Hart when the car bomb detonated. I know Moira survived the blast, because she checked herself into and out of an ER right afterward. But now she‘s gone completely off the grid. She squeezed his arm.

— I thought you‘d want to know.

She kissed him as he had kissed her moments before. As she walked back to the Egyptian, who had clearly become impatient at the delay, Bourne felt as if he had vacated his body. He seemed to be looking down on the three people on the tarmac as if from a great height. He saw Soraya say something to Chalthoum, saw the Egyptian nod, saw them both head toward a small military jet. He saw Tracy staring after them, an expression of both curiosity and consternation on her face; he saw himself standing apart, as still as if he had been suspended in amber. He observed all these things without a trace of emotion or awareness of consequence, flooded as he was by images of Moira in Bali with the sun in her eyes, turning them luminous, lambent, phosphorescent, unforgettable. It was as if in his memory he needed to protect her, or at least keep her safe from the dangers of the outside world. It was an absurd impulse, but, he told himself, a wholly human one. Where was she? How badly was she injured? And over all, the terrifying question loomed: Was the car bomb that killed Veronica Hart meant for Moira? Adding to his concern, when he‘d called, her number was out of service, which meant she‘d changed phones.

So deep had he sunk into himself that it was several moments before he realized that Tracy was talking to him. She stood facing him, her face a mask of concern.

— Adam, what‘s going on? Did your sister give you bad news?

— What? He was still slightly distracted by the swirl of emotions that had been loosed from his tight control. -Yes, she told me that yesterday our mother passed away unexpectedly.

— Oh, I‘m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?

His mouth smiled, though he remained far away. -That‘s very kind, but no. There‘s nothing anyone can do now.

M. Errol Danziger had a soul like an angry fist. From adolescence onward, he had made it his business to know everything there was to know about Muslims. He had studied the histories of Persia and the Arabian Peninsula; he spoke both Arabic and Farsi fluently, could recite entire sections of the Qur‘an by heart, as well as a multitude of Muslim prayers. He had absorbed the essential differences between Sunni and Shi‘a, and despised them both with equal fervor. For years now he had used his knowledge of the Middle East in the service of a destructive force against those who wished his country harm.

His intense-some believed obsessive-antipathy toward Muslims of all stripes might very well have stemmed from his high school years in the South, when a rumor that he harbored Syrian blood raced around the schoolyard, causing him to be the butt of endless jokes and taunting. Finally, inevitably, systematically, he was isolated, then ostracized, from social life. That the rumor was based on the truth-Danziger‘s paternal grandfather was of Syrian descent-made his misery complete.

He buried his curdled heart at precisely 8 AM when he took formal control of CI. He had still to appear on Capitol Hill, to be asked absurd and irrelevant questions by preening legislators looking to impress their constituents with probing questions fed them by their assistants. But that dog-and-pony show, Halliday had assured him, was a mere formality. The secretary of defense had amassed more than enough votes to push through his confirmation without a struggle or even much debate.

At precisely 8:05 AM he convened a meeting of the senior staff in the largest of the conference rooms at CI headquarters, an elongated oval without windows because glass was an excellent carrier of sound waves and an expert with field glasses trained on the room could read lips. Danziger was quite clear as to the attendees: the heads of the seven directorates, their immediate subordinates, and the chiefs of all the departments attached to the various directorates.

The spacious room was illuminated by indirect lights hidden by massive soffits built into the circumference of the ceiling. Specially designed and manufactured carpeting was so dense it absorbed nearly all sound, so that all those present were forced to focus their entire attention on whoever was speaking.

On this particular morning that was M. Errol Danziger, also known as the Arab, who, as he looked around the oval table, saw nothing but pale and anxious faces whose owners were still trying to digest the shocking news of his being anointed by the president as the next DCI. To a man-and of this he was quite certain-they had been expecting one of the seven, most likely Dick Symes, chief of intelligence and the most senior of the heads of the seven directorates, to be convening this meeting.

Which was why his gaze fixed on Symes last, why, as he commenced his inaugural address to the troops, he kept his eyes firmly fixed on Symes. After studying the CI organizational chart, he had made up his mind to reach out to Symes, to make of him an ally, because he would need allies, would need to gather to his side a cadre of the CI faithful whom he could bend to his will, whom he could slowly indoctrinate in the new ways, and who, as disciples of the new religion he meant to bring to CI, would spread the gospel as chosen ones should. They would do his work for him, work that would be too difficult, if not impossible, for him to accomplish on his own. Because his mission was not to replace CI personnel, but to convert from within, until a new CI emerged along the lines of the blueprint Bud Halliday had drawn up for him.

To this end, he had already decided to promote Symes to DDCI, after a suitable time. In this way, through flattery and then recruitment, he meant to cement his power at CI.

— Good morning, gentlemen. I suspect you have heard rumors-and here I hope I‘m wrong, but in the event I‘m not, my aim this morning is to set the record straight. There will be no firings, no transfers, no forced reassignments, although in the natural course of events, there will inevitably be, as we move forward, reassignments, as, I understand, there have always been here, and, indeed, in any organically evolving organization. In preparation for this moment, I‘ve studied the hallowed history of CI, and I can confidently state that no one understands the legacy of this great organization better than I do. Let me assure you-and my door is always open for discussion on this and any other topic that may be of concern to you-that nothing will change, that the legacy of the Old Man, who, I might add, I venerated from the time I was a young man fresh out of college, remains paramount in my mind, which leads me to say in all honesty and humility that it is a privilege and an honor to be among you, to become a part of you, to lead this great organization into the future.

The men ranged around the table sat in complete silence, trying to parse this long-winded preamble while, at the same time, trying to register it on their individual bullshit meters. It was a curious fact that Danziger had absorbed the involuted rhythm of Arabic so thoroughly that it had infected his English, especially when he was addressing a group. Where a word would do, a sentence would present itself; where a sentence would do, a paragraph appeared.

As a palpable feeling of relief washed over the conference room, he sat down, opened the file in front of him, and paged through the first half of it. All at once, he looked up. -Soraya Moore, the director of Typhon, isn‘t present because she is currently on assignment. You should know that I‘ve canceled that assignment and ordered her to return at once for a thorough debriefing.

He watched some heads turning in consternation, but there was no murmuring at all. Taking one last glance down at his notes, he said, — Mr. Doll, why isn‘t your boss, Mr. Marks, in attendance this morning?

Rory Doll coughed into his fist. -I believe he‘s in the field, sir.

As the Arab looked at Doll, a fair-haired wisp of a man with electric blue eyes, he smiled winningly. -You believe he‘s in the field or you know he‘s in the field?

— I know it, sir. He told me himself.

— All right, then. Danziger‘s smile hadn‘t budged. — Where in the field?

— He didn‘t specify, sir.

— And I assume you didn‘t ask him.

— Sir, with all due respect, if Chief Marks wanted me to know, he would‘ve told me.

Without taking his eyes off Marks‘s second, the Arab closed the file in front of him. It seemed as if the entire room were holding its collective breath. -Quite right. I approve of sound security procedure, the new DCI said. -Please ensure Marks comes to see me the moment he returns.

His gaze broke away from Doll at last and roved around the table, engaging in turn each of the senior officers. -All right, shall we proceed?

From this moment on all the resources of CI will be bent toward the undermining and destruction of the current regime in Iran.

A frisson of excitement raced like wildfire from officer to officer.

— In a few moments I‘ll outline to you the overarching operation to exploit a new pro-American indigenous Iranian underground, ready and able, with our support, to topple the regime from inside Iran.

When it comes to the police commissioner in this town, Willard said,

— throwing your weight around is worse than useless. I say that because the PC

is used to getting his own way, even with the mayor. He isn‘t intimidated by feds, and he‘s not shy about saying so.

Willard and Peter Marks were mounting the stone steps of a brownstone far enough off Dupont Circle not to be snooty, but close enough to be a recipient of the area‘s innate urbanity. This was wholly Willard‘s doing. Having ascertained that Lester Burrows, the police commissioner, was gone for the day, Willard had directed them to this block, to this specific brownstone.

— That being the case, the only smart way to play him is with psychology. Honey is a powerful incentive inside the Beltway, never more so than with the Metro police.

— You know Commissioner Burrows?

— Know him? Willard said. -He and I trod the boards in college; we played Othello together. He was a helluva Moor, let me tell you, scary-good-I knew his rage was genuine because I knew where he came from. He nodded, as if to himself. -Lester Burrows is one African American who has transcended the utter poverty of his childhood in every sense of the word. That‘s not to say he‘s forgotten it, not by a long shot, but, unlike his predecessor, who never met a bribe he didn‘t take, Lester Burrows is a good man underneath the mean streak he‘s cultivated to protect himself, his office, and his men.

— So he‘ll listen to you, Marks said.

— I don‘t know about that — Willard‘s eyes twinkled- but he sure as hell won‘t turn me away.

There was a brass knocker in the shape of an elephant that Willard used to announce their presence.

— What is this place? Marks asked.

— You‘ll see soon enough. Just follow my lead and you‘ll be okay.

The door opened, revealing a young African American woman dressed in a fashionable business suit. She blinked once and said, — Freddy, is that really you?

Willard chuckled. -It‘s been a while, Reese, hasn‘t it?

— Years and years, the young woman said, a smile creasing her face.

— Well, don‘t just stand there, come on in. He‘s going to be tickled beige to see you.

— To fleece me, you mean.

Now it was the young woman‘s turn to chuckle, a warm, rich sound that seemed to caress the listener‘s ear.

— Reese, this is a friend of mine, Peter Marks.

The young woman stuck out her hand in a no-nonsense fashion. She had a rather square face with an aggressive chin and worldly eyes the color of bourbon. -Any friend of Freddy‘s… Her smile deepened. -Reese Williams.

— The commissioner‘s strong right hand, Willard supplied.

— Oh, yes. She laughed. -What would he do without me?

She led them down a softly lit, wood-paneled hallway, decorated with photos and watercolors of African wildlife, most predominantly elephants, with a smattering of rhinos, zebras, and giraffes thrown in.

They arrived soon after at double pocket doors, which Reese threw open to a blue cloud of aromatic cigar smoke, the discreet clink of glassware, and the fast-paced dealing of cards on a green baize table in the center of the library. Six men-including Commissioner Burrows-and one woman sat around the table, playing poker. All of them were high up in various departments of the district‘s political infrastructure. The ones Marks didn‘t know on sight, Willard identified for him.

As they stood on the threshold, Reese went ahead of them, crossing to the table, where Burrows sat, patiently playing his hand. She waited just behind his right shoulder until he‘d raked in the considerable pot, then leaned over and whispered in his ear.

At once the commissioner glanced up and a wide smile spread over his face. -Goddammit! he exclaimed, pushing his chair back and rising. -Well, wash my socks and call me Andy, if it isn‘t Freddy Fucking Willard! He strode over and engulfed Willard in a bear hug. He was a massive man with a bowling-ball head, who looked like an overstuffed sausage. His freckledappled cheeks belied the master manipulator‘s eyes and the pensive mouth of a seasoned politician.

Willard introduced Marks and the commissioner pumped his hand with that sinister warmth peculiar to people in public life, which flicks on and off with the quickness of a lightning strike.

— If you‘ve come to play, Burrows said, — you‘ve come to the right joint.

— Actually, we‘ve come to ask you about Detectives Sampson and Montgomery, Marks said impulsively.

The commissioner‘s brow pulled down, darkening into a furry mass. -Who are Sampson and Montgomery?

— With all due respect, sir, you know who they are.

— Son, are you some sort of psychic? Burrows turned on Willard. -Freddy, who the hell is he to tell me what I know?

— Ignore him, Lester. Willard inserted himself between Marks and the commissioner. -Peter‘s been a little on edge since he went off his medication.

— Well, get the man back on it, stat, Burrows said. -That mouth is a fucking menace.

— I will certainly do that, Willard said as he grabbed Marks to keep him out of the line of fire. -In the meantime, do you have room for one more at the table?

Noah Perlis, sitting in the lime-scented shade of the lavish rooftop garden at 779 El Gamhuria Avenue, could see all of Khartoum, smoky and indolent, laid out before him to his right, while to his left were the Blue and White Nile rivers that divided the city into thirds. In central Khartoum the hideous Chinese-built Friendship Hall, and the weird futuristic Al-Fateh building, so like the nose cone of an immense rocket, mixed uneasily with the traditional mosques and ancient pyramids of the city, but the unsettling juxtaposition was a sign of the times-hide-bound Muslim religion seeking its way in the alien modern world.

Perlis had his laptop open, the latest iteration of the Bardem program running the last of the scenarios: the incursion by Arkadin and his twentyman cadre into that section of Iran where, like Palestine, the milk and honey flowed, in the form of oil.

Perlis never did one thing when he could do two or, preferably, three at once. He was a man whose mind was so quick and restless that it needed a kind of internal web of goals, puzzles, and conjectures to keep from imploding into chaos. So while he studied the probabilities of Pinprick‘s end phase the program was spitting out he thought about the devil‘s deal he‘d been forced to make with Dimitri Maslov and, by extension, Leonid Arkadin. First and foremost, it galled him to partner with Russians, whose corruption and dissolute lifestyle he both loathed and envied. How could a bunch of scummy pigs like that be so awash in money? While it was true that life was never fair, he mused, sometimes it could be downright malevolent. But what could he do? He‘d tried many other routes but, in the end, Maslov had been the only way to get to Nikolai Yevsen, who felt about Americans the way he, Perlis, felt about Russians. Accordingly, he‘d been forced to make a deal with too many partners-too many partners for whom double dealing and backstabbing had been ingrained in their nature virtually from birth. Contingencies had to be made against the threat of such treachery, and that meant triple the planning and man-hours. Of course, it also meant he‘d been able to triple the fee he was charging Bud Halliday, not that the price meant anything to the secretary, the way the US Mint was printing up dollars as if they were confetti. In fact, at the last Black River board meeting, members of the steering committee were so concerned with the threat of hyperinflation that they had voted unanimously to convert their dollars into gold bullion for the next six months while they put their clients on notice that starting September 1, the company would accept fees only in gold or diamonds. What bothered him about that meeting was that Oliver Liss, one of the three founding members and the man he reported to, was absent.

Simultaneously, he was thinking of Moira. Like a cinder in his eye, she had become an irritant. She was firmly lodged in a corner of his mind ever since she had abruptly quit Black River and, after a short hiatus, had started her own company in direct competition with him. Because, make no mistake, Perlis had taken her defection and subsequent treachery personally. It hadn‘t been the first time, but he vowed to himself that it would be the last. The first time… well, there were good reasons not to think about the first time. He hadn‘t for years and he wasn‘t about to start now.

Besides, how else should he take actions that directly drained him of his best personnel? Like a jilted lover, he seethed for revenge, his longwithheld affection for her curdled into outright hatred-not only of her, but of himself. While she was under his control, he‘d played his cards too close to the vest-had, he had to admit bitterly, misplayed them altogether. And now she was gone, out of his control and in complete opposition to him. He took whatever solace he could salvage from the fact that her lover, Jason Bourne, was dead. He wished her only ill now, he wanted to see her not simply defeated but humiliated beyond redemption; nothing less would appease his appetite for vengeance.

When his satellite phone rang, he assumed it was Bud Halliday, giving him the signal to launch the final phase of Pinprick, but instead he discovered Humphry Bamber on the line.

— Bamber, he shouted, — where the hell are you?

— Back at my office, thank God. Bamber‘s voice sounded thin and metallic.

— I finally managed to escape because the woman Moira Something was too badly hurt in the explosion to hold on to me for long.

— I heard about the explosion, Noah said truthfully, though of course he didn‘t add that he‘d ordered it to keep Veronica Hart and Moira from finding out about Bardem from Bamber. -Are you all right?

— Nothing a few days‘ rest won‘t cure, Bamber said, — but listen, Noah, there‘s a glitch in the version of Bardem you‘re running.

Noah stared out at the rivers, the beginning and the end of life in North Africa. -What kind of a glitch? If the program needs another security patch, forget it, I‘m almost finished using it.

— No, nothing like that. There‘s a calculation error; the program isn‘t producing accurate data.

Now Noah was alarmed. -How the hell did that happen, Bamber? I paid through the nose for this software and now you tell me that-

— Calm down, Noah, I‘ve already solved the internal error and corrected it. All I need to do now is to upload it to you, but you‘ll have to shut down all your programs.

— I know, I know, and Jesus, I ought to know the protocol by now considering how many versions of Bardem we‘ve been through.

— Noah, you have no idea how complex this program is-I mean, come on, literally millions of factors had to be incorporated into the software‘s architecture, and per your orders at the speed of light, too.

— Can it, Bamber. The last thing I need now is a lecture from you. Just get the fucking thing done. Perlis‘s fingers were running over his laptop‘s keyboard, shutting down programs. -Now, you‘re sure the latest parameters I‘ve loaded into the program will be there when I bring up the new version?

— Absolutely, Noah. That‘s why Bardem has one monster-size cache.

— Nothing better be missing, Noah said, and silently he added, Not at this late date. We’re almost at the finish line.

— Just let me know when you‘re ready, Bamber prompted.

All the programs were closed, but it took several minutes of going through one deliberately convoluted protocol after another until he exited the proprietary Black River security software. While this was happening, he muted his line with Bamber and dialed a number on a second satellite phone.

— Someone needs to be put to sleep, he said. -Yes, right away. Hold on and I‘ll transfer the particulars in a minute.

He unmuted the line with Bamber. -All set, he said.

— Then here we go!