Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (28 page)

"Sorry, Peter," he said as he slid into a chair at their table. Dr. Peter Sido raised a hand equably. "It's of no moment, Stepan. I know how busy you are."

"Not too busy to find Dr. Schiffer."

"And thank God for that!" Sido ladled whipped cream into his coffee cup. He shook his head. "Honestly, Stepan, I don't know how I'd do without you and your contacts. When I discovered that Felix was missing, I was ready to lose my mind."

"Don't worry, Peter. Every day we're closer to finding him. Trust me."

"Oh, I do." Sido was in all ways physically unremarkable. He was of middle height and weight with eyes the color of mud, magnified behind steel-rimmed spectacles, and short brown hair that seemed to fall across his scalp with no design or attention from him. He wore a brown herringbone tweed suit, slightly shabby at the cuffs, white shirt and a brown-and-black tie that was at least a decade out of date. He might have been a salesman or an undertaker, but he was not, for his unremarkable exterior concealed a most remarkable mind.

"The question I have for you," Spalko said now, "is whether you have the product for me."

Sido was apparently expecting the question because he nodded immediately. "It's all synthesized and ready whenever you need it."

"Did you bring it?"

"Just the sample. The rest is safely locked away in the Bio-I Clinic's cold room. And don't worry about the sample; it's locked in a travel case I made myself. The product is extremely delicate. You see, up until the moment it's to be used, it must be kept at minus thirty-two degrees Celsius. The case I constructed has its own integrated cooling unit that will last for forty-eight hours." He reached beneath the table, brought up a small metal box more or less the size of two stacked paperback books. "Is that long enough?"

"Quite enough, thank you." Spalko took possession of the box. It was heavier than it looked, no doubt owing to the refrigeration unit "It's in the vial I specified?"

"Of course." Sido sighed. "I still don't fully understand why you need such a lethal pathogen."

Spalko studied him for a moment. He took out a cigarette and lit it. He knew that to come up with an explanation too quickly would spoil the effect, and with Dr. Peter Sido effect was everything. Though he was a genius at creating airborne pathogens, the good doctor's people skills left something to be desired. Not that he was much different from most scientists with their noses in their beakers, but in this case, Side's naivete suited Spalko's purposes perfectly. He wanted his friend back, nothing else much mattered, which was why he wouldn't listen too carefully to Spalko's explanation. It was his conscience that needed reassuring, nothing more.

Spalko spoke at last. "As I said, I was contacted by the joint American-British AntiTerrorist Task Force."

"Will they be at the summit next week?"

"Of course," Spalko lied. There was no joint American-British Anti-Terrorist Task Force except for the one he had concocted. "In any case, they're on the verge of a breakthrough against the threat of bioterrorism, which, as you know better than most, includes lethal airborne pathogens as well as chemical substances. They need to test it, which is why they came to me, and why we've made this agreement. I find Dr. Schiffer for you and you provide the product the task force needs."

"Yes, I know all that. You explained..." Side's voice trailed off. He played nervously with his spoon, drumming it up and down against his napkin until Spalko asked him to stop.

Sorry," he mumbled and pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. "But what I still don't understand is what they're going to do with the product. I mean, you mentioned a test of some sort."

Spalko leaned forward. Now was the crucial time; he had to sell Sido. He looked to his left and right. When he spoke, he lowered his voice considerably. "Listen very carefully. Peter. I've told you more than I perhaps should have. This is all most top-secret, d'you see?"

Sido, hunched forward in response, nodded his head.

"In fact, I'm afraid that I've violated the confidentiality agreement they made me sign just by telling you this much."

"Oh, dear." Side's expression was mournful. "I've put you at risk."

"Please don't worry about that, Peter. I'll be fine," Spalko said. "Unless, of course, you tell someone."

"Oh, but I wouldn't. Never."

Spalko smiled. "I know you wouldn't, Peter. I trust you, you see."

"And I appreciate that, Stepan. You know I do."

Spalko had to bite his lip in order not to laugh. Instead, he dove deeper into this farce.

"I don't know what the test is, Peter, because they haven't told me," he said so softly that the other was obliged to lean in so close their noses were almost touching. "And I wouldn't ask."

"Of course not."

"But I believe—and you must also—that these people are doing their utmost to keep us safe in an increasingly unsafe world." What it always boiled down to, Spalko thought, was a matter of trust. But for the patsy—in this case, Sido—to be taken in, he had to know that
you
had given
him
your trust. After that, you could fleece him of everything he owned and he'd never suspect it was you who'd done it to him. "I say, whatever they have to do, we must help them in any way we can. This is what I told them when they first approached me."

"It's what I would've told them, as well." Sido wiped the perspiration off his unremarkable upper lip. "Believe me, Stepan, if you can count on anything you can count on that."

The U.S. Naval Observatory at Massachusetts Avenue and 34th Street was the official source for all standard time in the United States. It was one of the few places in the country where the moon, the stars and the planets were kept under constant observation. The largest telescope on the property was more than one hundred years old and was still in use. Peering through it in 1877, Dr. Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars. Nobody knows why he chose to call them Deimos (Anxiety) and Phobos (Fear), but the DCI knew that when his melancholia lay most deeply about him, he was drawn to the observatory. That was why he'd had an office set up for himself deep in the heart of the building, not far from Dr. Hall's telescope.

It was here that Martin Lindros found him on a closed-circuit teleconference linkup with Jamie Hull, head of the U.S. security detail in Reykjavik.

"Feyd al-Saoud I'm not concerned with," Hull was saying in his rather supercilious voice. "The Arabs don't know shit about modern-day security, so they're happy to take our lead." He shook his head. "It's the Russian, Boris Illyich Karpov, who's giving me a royal pain in the ass. He questions everything. If I say white, he says black. I think the fucker gets off on arguing."

"Are you saying you can't handle one goddamn Russian security analyst, Jamie?"

"Uh, what?" Hull's blue eyes looked startled and his ginger mustache jumped up and down. "No, sir. Not at all."

"Because I can have you replaced in a heartbeat." The DCI's voice projected a thorny note of cruelty.

"No, sir."

"And believe me, I will. I'm in no fucking mood for—"

"That won't be necessary. I'll get Karpov under control."

"See that you do." Lindros could hear the sudden weariness in the old warrior's voice, hoped Jamie couldn't detect it through the electronic connection. "We need a solid front before, during and after the president's visit. Is that clear?"

"Yessir."

"No sign of Jason Bourne, I suppose."

"None whatsoever, sir. Believe me, we've been extra vigilant." Lindros, aware that the DCI had gotten all the information he required for the moment, cleared his throat.

"Jamie, my next appointment just showed," the DCI said without turning around. "I'll be in touch tomorrow." He toggled off the teleconferencer, sat with his hands steepled, staring at the a large color photograph of the planet Mars and its two uninhabitable moons.

Lindros shrugged off his raincoat, came and sat down beside his boss. The room the DCI had chosen was small, cramped and over-hot even in the depths of winter. A portrait of the president was on one wall. Opposite was a single window through which tall pines could be seen, black and white, all detail washed out of them by the brilliant security floodlights. "The news from Paris is good," he said. "Jason Bourne is dead." The DCI picked up his head, a certain animation flooding features that had been slack moments ago. "They got him? How? I hope the bastard died in a world of pain."

"Chances are he did, sir. He died in a highway collision on the Al just northwest of Paris. The motorcycle he was driving rammed head-on into an eighteen-wheeler. A Quai d'Orsay officer was an eyewitness."

"My God," the DCI breathed. "Nothing left but an oil slick." His brows knitted together. "There can be no doubt?"

"Until we have a confirmed identification, there's always doubt," Lindros said. "We forwarded Bourne's dental records and a sample of his DNA, but the French authorities tell me there was a terrific explosion, and in the aftermath the fire burned so hotly that they fear even the bones might not have survived. In any case, it's going to take them a day or two to sift through the scene of the accident. They've assured me that they'll be in touch as soon as they have further information."

The DCI nodded.

"And Jacques Robbinet is unharmed," Lindros added.

"Who?"

"The French Minister of Culture, sir. He was a friend of Conklin's and a sometime asset. We were afraid he was Bourne's next target."

The two men sat very still. The DCFs eyes had turned inward. Perhaps he was thinking of Alex Conklin, perhaps he was contemplating the roles anxiety and fear played in modern life, wondering how Dr. Hall had been so prescient. He had gotten into clandestine work in the mistaken notion that it would help alleviate the anxiety and fear with which he had seemed to have been born. Instead, operating in the twilight had done just the opposite. And yet he had never contemplated leaving his profession. He could not imagine life without it; his very being was defined by who he was and what he had done in the sub-rosa world invisible to civilians.

"Sir, if I may say so, it's late."

The DCI sighed. "Tell me something I don't know, Martin."

"I think it's time you went home to Madeleine," Lindros said softly. The DCI passed a hand across his face. All off a sudden he was very tired. "Maddy's at her sister's in Phoenix. The house is dark tonight."

"Go home anyway."

As Lindros rose, the DCI turned his head in his deputy's direction. "Martin, listen to me, you may think this Bourne business is over, but it isn't." Lindros had taken up his raincoat; now he paused. "I don't understand, sir."

"Bourne may be dead, but in the last few hours of his life he managed to make monkeys of us."

"Sir—"

"Public spectacles. We can't have that. In this day and age, there's just too much damn scrutiny. And where there's scrutiny, there are hard questions asked, and these questions unless immediately put to rest inevitably lead to grave consequences." The DCI's eyes sparked. "We are lacking only one element to wrap up this sorry episode and consign it to the dustbin of history."

"What's that, sir?"

"We need a scapegoat, Martin, someone to whom the shit will stick completely, leaving us smelling like rosebuds in May." He looked hard at his DDCI. "Do you have someone like that, Martin?"

A cold ball of anxiety had formed in the pit of Lindros' stomach.

"Come, come, Martin," the DCI said with asperity, "do speak up." Still, Lindros looked at him mutely. He seemed as if he could not get his jaws to work.

"Of course you do, Martin," the DCI snapped.

"You're loving this, aren't you?"

The DCI winced inside at the accusation. Not for the first time, he was grateful that his boys were safely away from this business where he would have had to hold them down. No one was going to surpass him; he'd make sure of that. "If you won't name him, I will. Detective Harris."

"We can't do that to him," Lindros said tightly. He could feel the anger fizzing in his head like a just-popped can of soda.

"We? Who said anything about we, Martin? This was your assignment. I made that clear from the get-go. Now it's entirely up to you to assign the blame."

"But Harris didn't do anything wrong."

The DCI arched an eyebrow. "I very much doubt that, but even if it's true, who cares?"

"I do, sir."

"Very well, Martin. Then I suppose you'll be taking the blame for the fiascos in Old Town and Washington Circle yourself."

Lindros' lips clamped shut. "This is my choice?"

"I don't see any others, do you? The bitch-woman intends to extract her pound of flesh from me one way or the other. If I have to sacrifice someone, I would damn well rather it be some aging detective in the Virginia State Police than my own DDCI. If you fell on your own sword, how do you suppose that would reflect on me, Martin?"

"Christ," Lindros said, in a seething rage, "how in the hell did you manage to survive this snakepit for so long?"

The DCI stood up, drew on his overcoat. "What makes you think I have?"

Bourne arrived at the Gothic stone edifice of Matthias Church at eleven-forty. He spent the following twenty minutes reconnoitering the area. The air was crisp and chill, the sky clear. But near the horizon a bank of thick clouds roiled and on the freshening wind the damp musk of rain came to him. Now and again a sound or a scent fired something in his damaged memory. He was certain that he had been here before, though when and on what mission he couldn't say. Once again, as he touched the void of loss and longing, he thought of Alex and Mo so strongly he might have been able to conjure them up this very moment.

With a grimace, he went on with his task, securing the area, making sure as best he could that the rendezvous site wasn't under enemy surveillance.

At the stroke of midnight, he approached the enormous southern facade of the church from which rose the eighty-meter Gothic stone tower, laden with gargoyles. A young woman was standing on the lowest step. She was tall, slim, strikingly beautiful. Her long red hair shone in the streetlights. Behind her, over the portal was a fourteenth-century relief of the Virgin Mary. The young woman asked him his name.