The Bourne Betrayal (18 page)

“Can I borrow your computer?”

“Help yourself,” Kim said.

Soraya sat down at Kim’s workstation and brought up the Internet browser. Navigating to the Google Web site, she typed in “carbon di-sulfide.”

“Cellulose is used in the manufacture of rayon and cellophane,” she called out to them as she read the text on the screen. “Carbon tet used to be a key ingredient in fire extinguishers and refrigeration, though it’s been abandoned because of its toxicity. Dithiocarbamates, dmit, xanthate are flotation agents in mineral processing. It’s also used to make metham sodium, a soil fumigant.”

“One thing’s for sure,” Kim said. “You won’t find it in your neighborhood hardware store. You’ve got to go searching for it.”

Soraya nodded. “And it presupposes prior knowledge of the compound and its specific charactistics.” She made a few quick notes in her
PDA
, then got up. “Okay, I’m out of here.”

“Mind if I tag along?” Overton said. “Until you showed up, this case was a brick wall in my face.”

“I don’t think so.” Soraya’s glance slid over to Kim. “I was going to tell you when I came in. I’ve been fired.”

“What?” Kim was aghast. “Why?”

“The new acting director doesn’t appreciate my streak of rebelliousness. I think he’s out to establish his authority. Today I’m the one he decided to piss on.”

Kim came over and hugged her in sympathy. “If there’s anything I can do.”

Soraya smiled. “I know who to call. Thanks.”

She was too preoccupied to notice the scowl of displeasure that had darkened Detective Overton’s face. He wasn’t going to be thwarted, not when he was so close to his goal.

Snow had begun to fall by the time Bourne and Zaim reached the village. It was there, nestled in a narrow valley like a ball in a cupped palm, just as Bourne remembered it. The clouds, low and heavy, made the mountains seem small and insignificant, as if they were about to be crushed in a clash of titans. The steeple of the church was the most prominent structure, and Bourne made for it.

Zaim stirred and groaned. Some time ago, he had awakened, and Bourne had gotten him off the horse just in time for him to vomit copiously among the whistling firs. Bourne made the Amhara eat some snow in order to hydrate him. He was dizzy and weak, but he understood completely when Bourne filled him in on what had happened. Their destination, he had informed Bourne, was a camp just outside the village in Bourne’s memory.

Now they had arrived at the village. Though Bourne was eager to link up with the person Zaim claimed could take him to Lindros, Zaim’s clothes had already frozen; unless he could be warmed up reasonably quickly, the cloth would take his skin with it when it was removed.

The gray, which Bourne had urged on at full gallop through knee-high snowbanks, was just about done in by the time they reached the outskirts of the camp. Three Amhara appeared as if out of nowhere, brandishing curved knives similar to the one Bourne had taken off the man whose neck he’d broken.

Bourne had been expecting them. No campsite would be left unguarded. He sat very still atop the panting, snorting gray while the Amhara drew Zaim down. When they saw who it was, one of them ran into a tent at the center of the campsite. He returned within minutes with an Amhara who was quite obviously the tribal chieftain, the nagus.

“Zaim,” he said, “what happened to you?”

“He saved my life,” Zaim muttered.

“And he, mine.” Bourne slid off the horse. “We were attacked on our way here.”

If the nagus was surprised that Bourne spoke Amharic, he gave no outward sign of it. “Like all Westerners, you brought your enemies with you.”

Bourne shivered. “You’re only half right. We were attacked by three Amhara soldiers.”

“You know who is paying them,” Zaim said weakly.

The nagus nodded. “Take them both inside to my hut, where it is warm. We will build up the fire slowly.”

Abbud ibn Aziz stood squinting up at the noxious sky that swirled around Ras Dejen’s north face, listening for the sound of rotors slicing the thin air.

Where was Fadi? His helicopter was late. Abbud ibn Aziz had been monitoring the weather all morning. With the front moving in, he knew the pilot had an extremely narrow window in which to make his landing.

In truth, though, he knew it wasn’t the cold or the thin air he silently railed against. It was the fact that he and Fadi were here in the first place. The plan. He knew who was behind it. Only one man could have dreamed up such a high-risk, volatile scheme: Fadi’s brother, Karim al-Jamil. Fadi might be the firebrand face of Dujja, but Abbud ibn Aziz, alone of all of Fadi’s many followers, knew that Karim al-Jamil was the heart of the cadre. He was the chess master, the patient spider spinning multiple webs into the future. Even thinking about what Karim al-Jamil might be planning sent Abbud ibn Aziz’s head spinning. Like Fadi and Karim al-Jamil, he had been educated in the West. He knew the history, politics, and economics of the non-Arab world-a prerequisite, so far as Fadi and Karim al-Jamil were concerned, in stepping up the ladder of command.

The problem for Abbud ibn Aziz was that he didn’t altogether trust Karim al-Jamil. For one thing, he was reclusive. For another, so far as he knew Karim al-Jamil spoke only to Fadi. That this might not be the case at all-that he knew less than he suspected about Karim al-Jamil-made him all the more uneasy.

This was his bias against Karim al-Jamil: that he, Fadi’s second in command, his most intimate comrade, was shut out from the inner workings of Dujja. This seemed to him eminently unjust, and though he was utterly loyal to Fadi, still he chafed to be kept on the outside. Of course, he understood that blood was thicker than water-who among the desert tribesmen wouldn’t? But Fadi and Karim al-Jamil were only half Arab. Their mother was English. Both had been born in London after their father had moved his company base there from Saudi Arabia.

Abbud ibn Aziz was haunted by several questions that part of him did not want answered. Why had Abu Sarif Hamid ibn Ashef al-Wahhib left Saudi Arabia? Why had he taken up with an infidel? Why had he compounded his error by marrying her? Abbud ibn Aziz could find no earthly reason why a Saudi would do such a thing. In truth, neither Fadi nor Karim al-Jamil was of the desert, as he was. They had grown up in the West, been schooled in the ceaselessly throbbing metropolis of London. What did they know of the profound silence, the severe beauty, the clean scents of the desert? The desert, where the grace and wisdom of Allah could be seen in all things.

Fadi, as befit an older brother, was protective of Karim al-Jamil. This, at least, was something Abbud ibn Aziz could understand. He himself felt the same way about his younger brothers. But in the case of Karim al-Jamil, he had been asking himself for some time into what dark waters he was leading Dujja. Was it a place that Abbud ibn Aziz wanted to go? He had come this far without raising his voice because he was loyal to Fadi. It was Fadi who had indoctrinated him into the terror war they had been forced into by the West’s incursions into their lands. It was Fadi who had sent him to Europe to be schooled, a time in his life he had despised but had nevertheless proved of benefit. To know the enemy, Fadi had told him many times, is to defeat him.

He owed Fadi everything; where Fadi led, he would follow. On the other hand, he wasn’t deaf, dumb, and blind. If at some future date when he had more information, he felt that Karim al-Jamil was leading Dujja-and, therefore, Fadi-into ruin, he would speak up, no matter the consequences.

A harsh, dry wind broke against his cheek. The whirring of the helicopter’s rotors came to him as if from a dream. But it was his own reverie from which he needed to free himself. He looked up, feeling the first snowflakes on his cheeks and lashes.

He picked out the black dot against the roiled grays of the sky. It bloomed quickly. Swinging his arms back and forth over his head, he stepped back from the landing site. Three minutes later, the helicopter had landed. The door swung open, and Muta ibn Aziz jumped out into the snow and ice.

Abbud ibn Aziz waited for Fadi to appear, but only his brother came to where he stood, outside the slowing swing of the rotor blades.

“All went well.” His embrace of his brother was stiff, formal. “Fadi has contacted me.”

Muta stood silent in the harsh wind.

For some time, a dispute had carved itself into the frontier of their lives. Like the rift created by an earthquake, the issue had separated them more than either of them would admit. Like an earthquake it had spit up, festering sores that now, years later, had turned to scoria-hard, dry, twisted as scar tissue.

Muta squinted. “Brother, where did Fadi go after he and I parted?”

Abbud could not keep the superior edge out of his voice. “His business lies elsewhere.”

Muta grunted. A bitter taste, all too familiar, had flooded his mouth. It is as it has always been. Abbud uses his power to keep me away from Fadi and Karim al-Jamil, the centers of our universe. Thus does he lord it over me. Thus has he sworn me to keep our secret. He is my elder brother. How can I fight him? His teeth ground together. As always, I must obey him all things.

Muta shivered mightily, moved out of the wind, into the lee of a rock formation. “Tell me, brother, what has been happening here?”

“Bourne arrived on Ras Dejen this morning. He’s making progress.”

Muta ibn Aziz nodded. “Then we must move Lindros to a safe location.”

“It is about to be done,” Abbud said with an icy edge to his voice.

Muta, his heart full of bile, nodded. “It’s almost over now. Within the next few days, Jason Bourne’s use to us will be at an end.” He smiled deeply, but it was completely self-contained. “As Fadi has said, revenge is sweet. How pleasurable it will be for him to see Jason Bourne dead!”

The nagus’s hut was surprisingly spacious and comfortable, especially for a structure that was more or less portable. The floor consisted of overlapping rugs. Skins hung on the walls, helping keep in the warmth provided by a fire fueled with dried bricks of dung.

Bourne, wrapped in a rough wool blanket, sat cross-legged by the fire while the nagus’s men slowly and gingerly undressed Zaim. When that was done, they wrapped him as well, made him sit beside Bourne. Then they served both men steaming cups of hot, strong tea.

Other men tended to Zaim’s wound, cleaning it, packing it with an herbal poultice, rebandaging it. As this was happening, the nagus sat down next to Bourne. He was a small man, unprepossessing save for the black eyes that burned like twin lamps in his burnished bronze skull. His body was thin and wiry, but Bourne was not fooled. This man would be skilled in the many ways, offensive and defensive, to keep himself and his men alive.

“My name is Kabur,” the nagus said. “Zaim tells me your name is Bourne.” He pronounced it in two syllables: Boh-orn.

Bourne nodded. “I’ve come to Ras Dejen to find my friend, who was on one of the warbirds that were shot down nearly a week ago. You know of this?”

“I do,” Kabur said.

His hand moved to his chest, and he held out something silver for Bourne to see. It was the pilot’s dog tags.

“He has no more need of them,” Kabur said simply.

Bourne’s heart sank. “He’s dead?”

“As close as can be.”

“What about my friend?”

“They took him along with this man.” The nagus offered Bourne a wooden bowl of heavily spiced stew into which a rough semicircle of unleavened bread had been stuck. While Bourne ate, using the bread as a spoon, Kabur went on. “Not by us, you understand. We are nothing in this, though, as you have already witnessed, some have taken money from them in return for service.” He shook his head. “But it is evil, a form of enslavement for which some have paid the ultimate price.”

“They.” Bourne, having eaten his fill, put the bowl aside. “Who, precisely, are they?”

Kabur tilted his head. “I feel surprise. I would have expected you to know far more about them than I. They come to us from across the Gulf of Aden. From Yemen, I imagine. But they aren’t Yemeni, no. God alone knows where they make their base. Some are Egyptian, others Saudi, still others Afghani.”

“And the leader?”

“Ah, Fadi. He is Saudi.” The nagus’s fierce black eyes had gone opaque. “We are, to a man, afraid of Fadi.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he is powerful, because he is cruel beyond imagining. Because he carries death in the palm of his hand.”

Bourne thought of the uranium transshipments. “You have seen evidence of the death he carries.”

The nagus nodded. “With my own eyes. One of Zaim’s sons-”

“The boy in the cave?”

Kabur swung toward Zaim, in whose eyes was a sea of pain. “A wayward son who could not hold advice in his head. Now we cannot touch him, even to bury him.”

“I can do that,” Bourne said. Now he understood why Alem was hiding out in the Chinook closest to the cave: He wanted to be near his brother. “I can bury him up there, near the summit.”

The nagus was silent. But Zaim’s eyes had turned liquid as they reengaged Bourne’s. “That would be a true blessing-for him, for me, for my family.”

“It will be done, this I swear,” Bourne said. He turned back to Kabur. “Will you will help me find my friend?”

The nagus hesitated a moment while he studied Zaim. At length, he sighed. “Will finding your friend hurt Fadi?”

“Yes,” Bourne said. “It will hurt him badly.”

“This is a very difficult journey you ask us to take with you. But because of my friend, because of his bond to you, because of your promise to him, I am honor-bound to grant your request.”

He raised his right hand and a man brought a device similar to a hookah. “We will smoke together, to seal the bargain we have made.”

Soraya had every intention of going home, but somehow she found herself driving into the Northeast quadrant of D.C. It was only when she turned onto 7th Street that she knew why she had come here. Making one more turn, she arrived outside Deron’s house.

For a moment, she sat, listening to the engine ticking. Five or six of the tough-looking crew infested the stoop of the house to the left but, though they observed her with gimlet eyes, they made no move to stop her as she got out of the car and went up the steps to Deron’s front door.