The Bourne Betrayal (46 page)

He left a message, telling her that Anne Held must be the mole inside CI.

“
COME
IN, Martin.” The
DCI
waved to Karim, who stood in the doorway to his inner sanctum. “I’m glad Anne caught you.”

Karim took the long walk to the chair in front of the DCI’s immense desk. The walk reminded him of the gauntlet of rock throwers a Bedouin traitor was forced to tread. If he made it to the end alive, he received a swift, merciful death. If not, he was left in the desert for the vultures to feed on.

Sounds came to him. Throughout the building, a strange atmosphere of celebration and mourning had gripped CI following the news that the Dujja nuclear facility in South Yemen had been obliterated, though men were killed in the raid. The
DCI
had been in contact with Commander Dorph. He and his complement of Skorpions and marines had been the only ones to survive the attack. There had been many casualties-three Chinooks filled with marines and CI Skorpions. The facility had been heavily protected by two Soviet MiGs armed with Sidewinder missiles. Dorph’s heli had taken them both down following the destruction of the target.

Karim sat. His nerves were always on edge when he sat in this chair. “Sir, I know we paid a heavy price, but you seem peculiarly gloomy given the success of our mission against Dujja.”

“I’ve done my grieving for my people, Martin.” The Old Man grunted as if in pain. “It’s not that I don’t feel relief-and no little vindication after the grilling I got in the War Room.” His heavy brows knitted together. “But between you and me, something doesn’t feel right.”

Karim felt a jolt of anxiety travel down his spine. Unconsciously, he moved to the edge of the chair. “I don’t follow, sir. Dorph confirmed that the facility suffered four direct hits, all from different angles. There’s no doubt that it was completely destroyed, as were the two hostile jet fighters defending it.”

“True enough.” The
DCI
nodded. “Still . . .”

Karim’s mind was racing, extrapolating possibilities. The DCI’s instincts were well known. He hadn’t kept his job for so long solely because he’d learned to be a good politician, and Karim knew it would be unwise simply to placate him. “If you could be more specific . . .”

The Old Man shook his head. “I wish I could be.”

“Our intel was right on the money, sir.”

The
DCI
sat back, rubbed at his chin. “Here’s what sticks in my craw. Why did the MiGs wait to launch the missiles until after the facility was destroyed?”

“Perhaps they were late in scrambling.” Karim was on delicate ground, and he knew it. “You heard Dorph-there was radiation fog.”

“The fog was low to the ground. The MiGs came in from above; the RF wouldn’t have affected them. What if they deliberately waited until the facility had been destroyed?”

Karim tried to ignore the buzzing in his ears. “Sir, that makes no sense.”

“It would if the facility was a dummy,” the Old Man said.

This line of inquiry was one that Karim could not allow the DCI-or anyone in CI-to pursue. “You may be right, sir, now that I think of it.” He stood. “I’ll look into it right away.”

The Old Man’s keen eyes peered up at him from beneath heavy brows. “Sit down, Martin.”

Silence engulfed the office. Even the dim sounds of celebration had faded as the CI personnel got back to their grim work.

“What if Dujja wanted us to believe we’d destroyed their nuclear facility?”

Of course that was exactly what had happened. Karim struggled to keep his heart rate under control.

“I know I sold Secretary Halliday on Tim Hytner being the mole,” the
DCI
went on doggedly.

“That doesn’t mean I believe it. If my hunch on the signal disinformation proves correct, here’s another set of theories: Either Hytner was framed by the real mole, or he wasn’t the only rotten apple in our barrel.”

“Those are all big ifs, sir.”

“Then eliminate them, Martin. Make it a priority. Use all necessary resources.”

The Old Man put his hands on his desk, levered himself up. His face was pale and pasty looking.

“Christ on a crutch, Martin, if Dujja’s misdirected us, it means we haven’t stopped them. To the contrary, they’re close to launching their attack.”

Muta ibn Aziz arrived in Istanbul just after noon and went immediately to see Nesim Hatun. Hatun ran the Miraj Hammam, a Turkish bath, in the Sultanahmet District. It was in an old building, large and rambling, on a side street not five blocks from the Hagia Sophia, the great church created by Justinian in AD 532. As such, the hammam was always well attended, its prices higher than those in less touristed sections of the city. It had been a hammam for many years-since well before Hatun had been born, in fact.

Hatun was proud of the fact that he’d bribed the right people so that his business was well written up in all the best guidebooks. The hammam made him a good living, especially by Turkish standards. But what had made him a millionaire many times over was his work for Fadi.

Hatun, a man of immense appetites, had a roly-poly body and the cruel face of a vulture. Looking into his black eyes, it was clear there was venom in his soul-a venom that Fadi had identified, coaxed out, and lovingly fed. Hatun had had many wives, all of them either dead or exiled to the countryside. On the other hand, his twelve children, whom he loved and trusted, happily ran the hammam for him. Hatun, his heart like a closed fist, preferred it that way. So did Fadi.

“Merhaba, habibi!” Hatun said by way of greeting when Muta ibn Aziz crossed his threshold. He kissed his guest on both cheeks and led him through the heavily mosaiced public rooms of the hammam into the rear section, which surrounded a small garden in the center of which grew Hatun’s prized date palm. He’d brought it all the way from a caravanserai in the Sahara, though at the time it was only a seedling, hardly bigger than his forefinger. He lavished more attention on that one tree than he had on any of his wives.

They sat on cool stone benches in filtered sunlight while they were served sweet tea and tiny cakes by two of Hatun’s daughters. Afterward, one of them brought an ornate nargilah-a traditional water pipe-which the two men shared.

These rituals and the time it took to perform them were a necessary part of life in the East. They served to cement friendship by showing the proper politeness and respect as observed by civilized people. Even today there were men like Nesim Hatun who observed the old ways, dedicated as they were to keeping the lamp of tradition burning through the neon glare of the electronic age.

At length, Hatun pushed the nargilah away. “You have come a long way, my friend.”

“Sometimes, as you know only too well, the oldest forms of communication are the most secure.”

“I understand completely.” Hatun nodded. “I myself use a new cell phone each day, and then speak only in the most general terms.”

“We have heard nothing from Yevgeny Feyodovich.”

Hatun’s eyebrows knit together. “Bourne survived Odessa?”

“This we do not know. But Feyodovich’s silence is disturbing. Understandably, Fadi is unhappy.”

Hatun spread his hands. They were surprisingly small, the fingers delicate as a girl’s. “As am I. Please be assured that I will see to Yevgeny Feyodovich myself.”

Muta ibn Aziz nodded his acceptance. “In the meantime, we must assume that he has been compromised.”

Nesim Hatun considered for a moment. “This man Bourne, they say that he is like a chameleon. If he is still alive, if he does find his way here, how will I know?”

“Fadi knifed him in the left side. Badly. His body will be battered. If he does come, it will be shortly, possibly even later today.”

Nesim Hatun sensed the messenger’s nervousness. The fruition of Fadi’s plan must be terribly close, he surmised.

They rose, passed through the private rooms, silent, lush as the garden outside.

“I will stay here for the remainder of the day and night. If, by then Bourne hasn’t shown, he won’t. And even if he does, it will be too late.”

Hatun nodded. He was right, then. Fadi’s attack against the United States was imminent.

Muta ibn Aziz pointed. “There is a screen at the far end of the garden, just there. This is where I will wait. If it happens that Bourne comes, he will want to see you. That you will allow, but in the middle of the interview I will send one of your sons to fetch you, and you and I will have a conversation.”

“So Bourne can overhear it. I understand.”

Muta ibn Aziz took a step closer, his voice reduced to a papery whisper. “I want Bourne to know who I am. I want him to know that I am returning to Fadi.”

Nesim Hatun nodded. “He will follow you.”

“Precisely.”

Right from the outset, Jon Mueller could see where Lerner’s man, Overton, had gotten himself into trouble. Shadowing Anne Held, he discovered her surveillance without too much difficulty. There was a difference between surveillance and shadowing: He was looking not to follow Held but to unearth the people who were protecting her from outside surveillance. As such, he was far back and high up. In the beginning, he used his own eyes rather than binoculars because he needed to see Held’s immediate environment in the widest range possible. Binoculars would home in on only narrow sections of it. They were useful, however, once he had IDed the man surveilling her.

In fact, there were three men, working in eight-hour shifts. That they were on twenty-four-hour alert hardly surprised him. Overton’s botched surveillance had surely made them both more fearful and more wary. Mueller had anticipated all this, and had a plan for countering it.

For twenty-four hours, he had observed Held’s complement of protectors. He noted their habits, quirks, predilections, methods of operation, all of which varied slightly. The one on the night shift needed a constant supply of coffee to keep him alert, while the one on the early-morning shift used his cell phone constantly. The one on the late-afternoon shift smoked like a fiend. Mueller chose him because his innate nervousness made him the most vulnerable.

He knew he would only get one shot, so he made the most of the opportunity he knew would sooner or later come his way. Hours ago, he’d stolen a utility truck off the back of the Potomac Electric Power Company lot on Pennsylvania Avenue. He drove this now, as Anne Held got into a waiting taxi outside CI headquarters.

As the cab pulled out into traffic, Mueller waited, patient as death. Quite soon, he heard an engine cough into life. A white Ford sedan edged out from its spot across the street as the afternoon man took up his position two vehicles behind the taxi. Mueller followed in the heavy traffic.

Within ten minutes, the Held woman had exited the taxi and had begun to walk. Mueller knew this MO well. She was on her way to a rendezvous. The traffic was such that the afternoon man couldn’t follow her in the car. Mueller had deduced this before her protector did, and so he’d pulled the truck over and parked on 17th Street NW, in a no-parking zone, knowing that no one would question someone in a public service utility truck.

Swinging out of the truck, he walked quickly to where the afternoon man had pulled over to the curb. Striding up, he tapped on the driver’s-side window. When the man slid down the glass, Mueller said, “Hey, buddy,” then sucker-punched him just below his left ear.

The traumatic disruption to the nerve bundle put him down for the count. Mueller set the unconscious man upright behind the wheel, then stepped up onto the sidewalk, keeping the Held woman in sight as she walked up the street.

Anne Held and Karim were strolling through the Corcoran Gallery on 17th Street, NW. The impressive collection of artwork was housed in a magnificent white Georgian marble structure that Frank Lloyd Wright had once called the best-designed building in Washington. Karim paused in front of a large canvas of the San Francisco painter Robert Bechtel, a photorealist whose artistic worth he could not fathom.

“The
DCI
suspects that the raid target was bogus,” Karim was saying, “which means he suspects that the Dujja intel Typhon intercepted and decoded is disinformation.”

Anne was shocked. “Where are these suspicions coming from?”

“The MiG pilots made a crucial mistake. They waited until after the American Chinooks leveled the abandoned complex before firing their missiles. Their orders were to allow the bombing so the Americans would believe the raid had been successful, but they were to come on the scene minutes later than they did. They thought the fog would hide them from the Chinooks, but the Americans found a way to dissipate it with their rotors. Now the Old Man wants me to look for a leak inside CI.”

“I thought you sold everyone on Hytner being the mole.”

“Everyone, it appears, except him.”

“What are we going to do?” Anne said.

“Move up the timetable.”

Anne looked around covertly, but nervously.

“Not to worry,” Karim said. “After we incinerated Overton, I put safeguards in place.” He looked at his watch and headed for the entrance. “Come. Soraya Moore is due to land in three hours.”

Jon Mueller, behind the wheel of the Potomac Electric truck, was just down the block from the Corcoran. He was now certain that Anne Held was making a rendezvous. That would have occupied Lerner, but not him. It wouldn’t matter who she was meeting after he took her out.

As soon as he saw Held come out the front entrance, he pulled out into traffic. Up ahead was the light at the junction of Pennsylvania Avenue. It was still green as she came down the stairs, but as he approached, it changed to amber. There was one car ahead of him. With a crash of gears and a roar of the truck’s engine, he pulled out, sideswiping the car as he barreled past it and jumped the red light, driving straight through the intersection to a chorus of curses, angry shouts, and horn blasts.

Mueller stamped the accelerator to the floor as he bore down on Anne Held.

The high-velocity bullet breaking the glass of the truck’s side window sounded like a far-off chime. Mueller had no time to consider that it might be anything else because the bullet tore into one side of his head and blew out the opposite, taking half his skull with it.