The Bourne Betrayal Part 9

"Knock yourself out." Deron went back to studying the NET.

Bourne sat down in a task chair and studied the photos for a long time. He could feel Soraya leaning over his right shoulder. He felt-what?-the ghost of a memory. He rubbed his temples, willing himself to remember, but the sliver of light eeled away into darkness. With some disquiet, he returned to his scrutiny of Cevik's face.

There was something about it-not any single feature, but an overall impression-that swam in his memory like the shadow of a fish out of sight beneath the surface of a lake. He zoomed in on one area of Cevik's face after another-mouth, nose, brow, temple, ears. But this only served to push the impressionistic memory farther into the unknown recesses of his mind. Then he came to the eyes-the golden eyes. There was something about the left one. Zooming in closer, he saw a minute crescent of light at the outer edge of the iris. He zoomed in again, but here the resolution failed him and the image began to blur. He zoomed out until the crescent of light sharpened. It was tiny. It could be nothing-a reflection of the illumination in the cell. But why was it at the edge of the iris? If it was a reflection off the iris, the light would be a mote nearer the center, where the eyeball was most prominent, and therefore most likely to pick up the light. This was at the edge where...

Bourne laughed silently.

At that moment Soraya's cell phone buzzed. He heard her on it briefly. Then she said: "The prelim from forensics indicates that the Hummer was packed with a s.h.i.+tload of C-Four."

He turned to her. "Which is why they wouldn't respond."

"Cevik and his crew were suicide bombers."

"Maybe not." Bourne turned back to the photo, pointing at the tiny crescent of light. "See that? It's a reflection off the edge of a contact lens, because it's slightly raised above the surface of the iris and has caught the light. Now look here. Notice this tiny fleck of the gold intruding on the curving left edge of the pupil? The only way that's possible is if Cevik was wearing colored contacts."

He peered up into her face. "Why would Cevik disguise himself unless he wasn't Cevik at all." He waited for her response. "Soraya?"

"I'm thinking."

"The disguise, the meticulous planning, the deliberate bomb attack."

"In the jungle," she said, "only a chameleon can spot another chameleon."

"Yes," Bourne said, staring at the photo. "I think we had Fadi under our thumb."

Another pause, this one shorter. Her brain was working so fiercely he could hear it.

"Chances are, then, Cevik didn't die in the blast," she said at length.

"That would be a good bet." Bourne thought a moment. "He wouldn't have had much time to get out of the Hummer. The only time I didn't have it in sight was when I was starting up the motorcycle. That means before the Twenty-third and Const.i.tution intersection."

"He might have had another car waiting."

"Check it out, but, frankly, I doubt it," Bourne said. Now he understood why Fadi had used the high-profile Hummer. He wanted it followed and, finally, surrounded by CI personnel. He wanted to inflict maximum damage. "There was no way for him to predict where he needed to bail."

Soraya nodded. "I'll grid it out from the point the Hummer picked Fadi up." She was already dialing Typhon. "I'll start a couple of teams canva.s.sing right away." She gave her instructions, listened gravely for a moment, then disconnected. "Jason, I have to tell you there's a growing internal rift. The DCI's gone ballistic over the Cevik fiasco. He's blaming you."

"Naturally." Bourne shook his head. "If it wasn't for Martin, I'd have nothing more to do with CI or Typhon. But he's my friend-he believed in me, fought for me when the agency was out for my blood. I won't turn my back on him. Still. I swear this is my last mission for CI."

For Martin Lindros, the shadows resolved themselves into the undersides of clouds, reflected in the still waters of the lake. There was a vague sensation of pain-what you might feel if a dentist drilled into a partially Novocained tooth. The pain, far off on the horizon, failed to disturb him. He was far too concentrated on the trout at the business end of his fis.h.i.+ng line. He reeled in, lifted the rod high so that it bent like a bow, then reeled in more line. Just as his father had taught him. This was the way to tire out a fish, even the most vigorous fighter. With discipline and patience, any hooked fish could be landed.

The shadows seemed to cl.u.s.ter right above him, blotting out the sun. The growing chill caused him to concentrate on this fish even harder.

Lindros's father had taught him many other things besides how to fish. A man of singular talents, Oscar Lindros had founded Vaultline, turning it into the world's foremost private security firm. Vaultline's clients were the super-conglomerates whose businesses often took their personnel into dangerous parts of the world. Oscar Lindros or one of his personally trained operatives was there to protect them.

Lindros, bending over the side of the boat, could see the flas.h.i.+ng rainbow-and-silver of the trout. It was a big one, all right. Bigger than any he'd caught to date. Despite the fish's thras.h.i.+ng, Lindros could see the triangular head, the bony mouth opening and closing. He hauled up on the rod and the trout came halfway out of the water, spraying him with droplets.

Early on, Martin Lindros had developed an interest in being a spy. It went without saying that this desire had thrilled his father. And so Oscar Lindros had set about teaching his son everything he knew about the business of clandestine work. Chief among this knowledge was how to survive any form of capture or torture. It was all in the mind, Oscar Lindros told his son. You had to train your mind to withdraw from the outside world. Then you had to train it to withdraw from those sections of the brain that transmitted pain. To do this, you needed to conjure up a time and a place, you needed to make this place real-as real as anything you could experience with your five senses. You had to go there and you had to stay there for the duration. Otherwise, either your will would eventually be broken or you would go mad.

This was where Martin Lindros was, where he had been ever since he had been taken by Dujja, brought to this place where his body now lay twitching and bleeding.

Out on the lake, Lindros finally landed the trout. It flopped and gasped in the bottom of the boat, its eye fixed on him even as it grayed over. Bending down, he removed the barbed hook from the hard cartilage around the trout's mouth. How many fish had he landed since he'd been out on the lake? It was impossible to know since they'd never stayed around long afterward; they were of no use to him once they were off the hook.

He baited the hook, cast out the line. He had to keep going, he had to keep fis.h.i.+ng. Otherwise the pain, a dim cloudbank on the horizon, would rush at him with the fury of a hurricane.

Sitting in the business-cla.s.s section of the overnight flight to London, Bourne put up the DO NOT DISTURB sign and took out the Sony PS3 Deron had given him, modified with expanded memory and ultra-high-resolution screen. The hard drive was preloaded with a bunch of new goodies Deron had concocted. Art forgeries might pay the rent, but his real love was dreaming up new miniaturized gadgets-hence his interest in the NET, which Bourne now had safely tucked away in its case.

Deron had provided Bourne with three separate pa.s.sports beyond his diplomatic-CI pa.s.sport. In each of the photos Deron had on file, Bourne looked completely different. He had with him makeup, colored contact lenses, and the like, along with one of Deron's new-generation guns made of rubber-wrapped plastic. According to Deron, the Kevlar-coated rubber bullets could bring down a charging elephant if put in the right spot.

Bourne brought up the photo of Hiram Cevik. Fadi. How many other ident.i.ties had this mastermind a.s.sumed over the years? It seemed probable that surveillance cameras, closed-circuit TV cameras, in public places, had recorded his image, but he'd doubtless looked different every time. Bourne had advised Soraya to go over all the tapes or still photos available of the areas just before and after the Dujja attacks, comparing the faces etched there with this photo of Cevik, although he had little hope she'd find anything. He himself had had his photo taken by surveillance cameras and CCTV over the years. He had no worries because the Chameleon had looked different in every one. No one could spot any similarities; he'd made d.a.m.n sure of that. So Fadi, the chameleon.

He stared at the face for a long time. Though he fought it, exhaustion overtook him, and he slept...

... Marie comes to him, in a place of mature acacia trees and cobbled streets. There is a sharp mineral tang in the air, as of a restless sea. A humid breeze lifts her hair off her ears, and it streams behind her like a banner.

He speaks to her. "You can get me what I want. I have faith in you."

There is fear in her eyes, but also courage and determination. She will do what he asks of her, no matter the danger, he knows it. He nods in farewell, and she vanishes...

He finds himself on the same street of looming acacias that he's summoned up before. The black water is in front of him. And then he's descending, floating through air as if from a parachute. He's sprinting across a beach at night. On his left is a dark line of kiosks. He's carrying... there is something in his arms. No, not something. Someone. Blood all over, a pounding in his veins. A pale face, eyes closed, one cheek on his left biceps. He sprints along the beach, feeling terribly exposed. He's violated his covenant with himself and because of that they'll all die: him, the figure in his arms... the young woman covered in blood. She's saying something to him, but he can't hear what. Running footsteps behind him, and the thought, clear as the moon riding low in the sky: We've been betrayed...

When Matthew Lerner walked into the outer office of the DCI's suite, Anne Held took a moment before she looked up. She had been working on nothing special. Nothing, in fact, that required her attention, yet it was important that Lerner think so. Privately, Anne likened the Old Man's outer office to a moat around a castle keep; she, the large-toothed carnivore that swam in it.

When she deemed that Lerner had waited long enough, she looked up, smiled coolly.

"You said the DCI wants to see me."

"In point of fact, I want to see you." Anne stood up, running her hands down her thighs to flatten any wrinkles that might have developed while she had been sitting. Pearly light spun off her perfectly manicured nails. "D'you fancy a cup of coffee?" she added as she crossed the room.

Lerner arched his eyebrows. "I thought it was tea you Brits liked."

She held the door open for him to pa.s.s through. "Just one of the many misconceptions you have about me."

In the metal-clad elevator going down to the CI commissary, silence reigned. Anne looked straight ahead while Lerner, no doubt, tried to figure out what this was all about.

The commissary was unlike that of any other governmental agency. Its atmosphere was hushed, the floors carpeted with deep pile in presidential blue. The walls were white, the banquettes and chairs red leather. The ceiling was constructed of a series of acoustic baffles that dampened all sound, especially voices. Waistcoated waiters glided expertly and soundlessly up and down the generous aisles between tables. In short, the CI dining room was more like a gentlemen's club than a commissary.

The captain, recognizing Anne instantly, showed the pair to the DCI's round corner table, almost entirely surrounded by one of the high-backed banquettes. She and Lerner slid in, coffee was served, then they were discreetly left alone.

Lerner stirred sugar into his cup for a moment. "So what's this all about?"

She took a sip of the black coffee, rolled the liquid around in her mouth as if it were a fine wine, then, satisfied, swallowed and put down her cup.

"Drink up, Matthew. It's single-estate Ethiopian. Strong and rich."

"Another new protocol I've inst.i.tuted, Ms. Held. We do not address each other by our Christian names."

"The problem with some strong coffee," she said, ignoring him, "is that it can be quite acidic. Too much acid will turn the strength against itself, upset the entire digestive system. Even burn a hole in the stomach. When that happens, the coffee must be thrown out."

Lerner sat back. "Meaning?" He knew she wasn't talking about coffee.

She allowed her eyes to rest on his face for a moment. "You were named DDCI, what, six months ago? Change is difficult for everyone. But there are certain protocols that cannot be-"

"Get to the point."

She took another sip of coffee. "It's not a good idea, Matthew, to be bad-mouthing Martin Lindros."

"Yeah? What makes him so special?"

"If you'd been at this level longer, you wouldn't need to ask."

"Why are we talking about Lindros? Chances are he's dead."

"We don't know that," Anne said shortly.

"Anyway, we're not really talking about Lindros's territory, are we, Ms. Held?"

She flushed then, despite herself. "You had no good cause to lower my clearance level."

"Whatever you might think your t.i.tle ent.i.tles you to, it doesn't. You're still support personnel."

"I'm the DCI's right hand. If he needs intel, I fetch it for him."

"I'm transferring in Reilly from Ops Directorate. He'll be handling all the Old Man's research from now on." Lerner sighed. "I see the look on your face. Don't take these changes personally. It's standard operational procedure. Besides, if you get special treatment, the other support personnel start to resent it. Resentment breeds distrust, and that we cannot tolerate."

He pushed his coffee cup away. "Whether you choose to believe it or not, Ms. Held, CI is moribund. It has been for years. What it needs most is a high colonic. I'm it."

"Martin Lindros has been put in charge of revamping CI," she said icily.

"Lindros is the Old Man's weakness. His way isn't the right way. Mine is." He smiled as he rose.

"Oh, and one other thing. Don't ever mislead me again. Support staff have no business wasting the deputy director's time with coffee and opinions."

Kim Lovett, in her lab at FIU headquarters on Vermont Avenue, was at the most crucial stage of her tests. She had to transfer the solid material she'd collected on the fifth-floor suite of the Const.i.tution Hotel from its airtight vials for the heads.p.a.ce gas chromatography. The theory was this: Since all known fire accelerants were highly volatile liquid hydrocarbons, the gases that the compounds gave off often remained at the scene for hours afterward. The idea was to capture the gases in the heads.p.a.ce above the solid material that had been impregnated with the accelerants: bits of charred wood, carpet fibers, lines of grout she'd dug out with a dentist's tool. She would then take a chromatogram of each of the gases based on its individual boiling point. In this way, a fingerprint of the accelerant emerged to be identified.

Kim stuck a long needle into the lid of each container, drew out the gas that had formed above the solid material, and injected it into the cylinder of the gas chromatograph without exposing it to the air. She ensured that the settings were correct, then slipped the switch that would begin the process of separation and a.n.a.lysis.

She was making notes as to the date, time, and sample number when she heard the lab door whoosh open and, turning, saw Detective Overton enter. He wore a fog-gray overcoat and carried two paper coffee cups in his hands. He set one down in front of her. She thanked him.

He seemed more morose than before. "What news?"

Kim savored the hot, sweet burn of the coffee in her mouth and her throat. "We'll know in a minute what accelerant was used."

"How's that going to help me?"

"I thought you were handing the case over to Homeland Security?"

"Magnificent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Two agents were in my captain's office this morning, demanding my notes," Overton said. "Not that I wasn't expecting it. So I made two sets, because I mean to break this case and shove it in their faces."

A beep sounded.

"Here we go." Kim swiveled around. "The results are ready." She peered at the chromatograph's readout. "Carbon disulfide." She nodded. "This is interesting. Typically, we don't see this particular accelerant in arson cases."

"Then why choose this one?"

"Good question. My guess is because it burns hotter and has an explosive limit of fifty percent-way higher than other accelerants." She swiveled around again. "You remember I found accelerants in two places-in the bathroom and under the windows. This interested me, and now I know why. The chromagraph gave me two separate readouts. In the bathroom, all that was used was the carbon disulfide. But at the other spot, the one in the living room near the windows, I found another compound, a rather complex and odd one."

"Like what?"

"Not an explosive. Something more unusual. I had to do some checking, but I discovered that it's a hydrocarbon compound that counteracts fire r.e.t.a.r.dants. This explains how the curtains caught fire, this explains why the explosion blew out the windows. Between the oxygen feeding the flames and the sprinklers being disabled, the maximum amount of damage in the minimum amount of time was virtually ensured."

"Which is why we were left with nothing, not even an intact skeleton or a set of teeth from which to make a definite ID of the body." He rubbed the blue stubble on his chin. "The perps thought of everything, didn't they?"

"Maybe not everything." Kim held up the two porcelain teeth she'd extracted from the bathtub drain. She had cleaned them of the coating of ash, so that they gleamed an ivory color.

"Right," said Overton. "We're trying to find out through channels in Amsterdam whether Jakob or Lev Silver wore a dental bridge. At least then we could make a positive ID."

"Well, the thing of it is," Kim said, "I'm not at all sure this is a dental bridge."

Overton plucked it out of her hand, studied it under a high-intensity lamp. So far as he could see, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary. "What else could it be?"

"I've got a call in to a friend of mine. Maybe she can tell us."

"Oh, yeah? What's she do?"

Kim looked at him. "She's a spook."

Bourne traveled from London to Addis Ababa; Addis Ababa to Djibouti. He rested very little, slept even less. He was too busy poring over the intel of Lindros's known movements that Soraya had provided him. Unfortunately, much of it was lacking details. Not altogether surprising. Lindros had been tracking the world's most deadly terrorist cadre. Communications of any kind would have been exceedingly difficult and would have compromised security.

When he wasn't memorizing the data, Bourne was reviewing the video intel Anne Held had uploaded to Soraya's cell, which now resided in the PS3, most especially Tim Hytner's attempt to break the cipher Typhon had found on Cevik's person. But now Bourne had to wonder about that cipher itself: Was it an authentic Dujja communication or was it a fake, planted, for some reason, for Typhon to find and decode? A bewildering labyrinth of duplicity had opened in front of him. From now on, each step he took was fraught with peril. A single false a.s.sumption could drag him under like quicksand.

It was at this moment that Bourne realized that he was up against a foe of extraordinary intelligence and will, a mastermind to rival his old nemesis Carlos.

He closed his eyes for a moment and immediately Marie's image came to him. It was she who had been his rock, who had helped him get through the tortures of the past. But Marie was gone. Every day that pa.s.sed, he felt her fading. He tried to hold on, but the Bourne ident.i.ty was relentless; it would not allow him to dwell on sentimentality, on sorrow and despair. All these emotions dwelled in him, but they were shadows, held at bay by Bourne's exceptional concentration and relentless need to solve deadly puzzles no one else could tackle. Of course, he understood the wellspring of his singular ability; he'd known it even before Dr. Sunderland had so succinctly summed it up: He was driven by his burning need to unravel the enigma of who he was.

In Djibouti a CI copter, fueled and ready, was waiting for him. He ran across the wet tarmac beneath an angry sky filled with bruised clouds and a humid, swirling wind, and climbed in. It was the morning of the third day since he'd set out from D.C. His limbs felt cramped, muscles bunched tight. He longed for action and was not looking forward to the hour-long flight to Ras Dejen.

Breakfast was served on a metal tray, and he dug in as the copter took off. But he tasted nothing and saw nothing, for he was totally inside his mind. He was, for the thousandth time, running Fadi's cipher, looking at it as a whole, because he'd gotten nowhere following the algorithm route that Tim Hytner had chosen. If Fadi had, indeed, turned Hytner-and Bourne could not come up with another reasonable conclusion-Hytner would have no incentive to actually break the cipher. This was why Bourne had wanted the cipher and Hytner's work. If he saw that Hytner's work was bogus, he'd have his proof of the man's culpability. But of course, that wouldn't answer the question of whether the cipher contained real intel or disinformation meant to confuse and misdirect Typhon.

Unfortunately, he was no closer to solving the cipher's algorithm or even knowing whether Hytner had been on the right track. He had, however, spent two restless nights filled not with dreams, but memory shards. He was disappointed that Dr. Sunderland's treatment had had such a short-term effect, but he couldn't say he hadn't been warned. Worse, by far, was the sense of impending calamity. All the shards revolved around the tall trees, the mineral scent of the water, the desperate flight across sand. Desperate not only for him, but for someone else as well. He'd violated one of his own cardinal rules, and now he was going to pay for it. Something had set off this series of memory fragments, and he had a strong suspicion that this origin was the key to understanding what had happened to him before. It was maddening to have no-or at best limited-access to his past. His life was a blank slate, each day like the day he'd been born. Knowledge denied-essential knowledge. How could he begin to know himself when his past had been taken away from him?

The copter, soaring below the thick cloud layer, swung northwest, heading toward the Simien mountain range. When Bourne finished his breakfast, he climbed into an extreme-weather jumpsuit and specially made snow boots with extra-thick soles studded with metal blades meant to give him support on icy and rocky terrain.

As he stared out the curved window, his thoughts turned inward again, this time toward his friend Martin Lindros. He'd met Lindros after his old mentor, Alex Conklin, was found murdered. It was Lindros who'd stood behind Bourne, believed in him when the Old Man had put out a worldwide sanction against him. Ever since, Lindros had been his faithful backup at CI. Bourne steeled himself. Whatever had happened to Lindros-whether he was alive or dead-Bourne was determined to bring him home.

Just over an hour later, he arrived on the north slope of Ras Dejen. Brilliant sunlight made shadows sharp as razor blades on the mountainside, which seemed to exist in a curling sea of cloud through which, now and again, vultures could be seen, soaring on the thermals.

Bourne was just behind Davis's right shoulder when the young pilot pointed down. There was the wreckage of both Chinooks, pillowed in fresh snow, streaked with black, metal stripped back, twisted off as if with a mammoth can opener wielded by a maniacal demon.