The Bourne Betrayal (64 page)

Confused again, Karim frowned. “What about him?”

“Marks is Soraya Moore’s conduit. He’s repeating the disinformation we fed her.”

Karim gave a wolfish grin; the doubt cleared from his eyes. “Wrong answer. CI believes my brother was killed in the raid on the false Dujja facility in South Yemen. But you wouldn’t have known that, Bourne, would you?”

He gave a sign and the three men behind Bourne grabbed him, then held his arms at his sides. Without taking his eyes from Bourne’s, Karim stepped forward, wrenched the briefcase out of his hand.

Soraya was running to where Peter Marks lay dead, spread-eagled on the curb, when she heard the deep-throated roar of a motorcycle approaching from behind. Pulling her gun, she swung around and saw Tyrone on his Ninja. He had just dropped Lindros’s corpse at the mortuary.

Slowing, he allowed her to climb aboard, then took off.

“You saw what happened. They killed Peter.”

“We gotta stop them.” Tyrone jumped a red light. “You put alla pieces t’gether-C-Four explosive, a replica of yo boss’s limo, yo boss hisself lyin’ flat-out on a embalming table, whattaya got?”

“That’s how they’re going to get in!” Soraya said. “Security will take one look at the Old Man in the backseat and wave the limo through into the underground parking lot.”

“Where the foundation of the building is.”

Tyrone, bending low over the Ninja’s handlebars, put on a burst of speed.

“We can’t shoot at the limo,” Soraya said, “without running the risk of setting off the C-Four and killing who knows how many bystanders.”

“An we can’t allow it t’get to CI headquarters,” Tyrone said. “So what d’we do?”

The answer was provided for them as one of the limo’s rear windows slid down and someone began firing at them.

Bourne stood without trying to move. He tried to clear his mind of the image of Martin Lindros’s ruined face, but in fact he found he didn’t want to. Martin was with him, speaking to him, demanding retribution for what had been done to him. Bourne felt him; Bourne heard him.

Patience, he whispered silently.

Centering himself, he felt where each of the three men was in relation to himself. Then he said:

“My one regret is that I never finished what I started in Odessa. Your father is still alive.”

“Only you would call that kind of existence living,” Karim snapped. “Every time I’m in his presence, I vow anew that I’ll make you pay for what you did to him.”

“Too bad he can’t see you as you are today,” Bourne said. “He’d take a gun and shoot you himself. If only he was able.”

“I understand you, Bourne, better than you think.” Karim stood barely a pace away from Bourne.

“Look at you. To everyone but ourselves you’re Fadi and I’m Lindros. We’re in our own separate world, locked in our circle of revenge. Isn’t that what you’re thinking? Isn’t that how you planned it?

Isn’t that why you’ve made yourself up to look like my brother?”

He shifted the briefcase from one hand to the other. “It’s also why you’re trying to bait me. An angry man is easier to defeat, isn’t that how the Tao of Bourne goes?” He laughed. “But in fact, with this last chameleon act of yours you’ve done me an incalculable service. You think I’m going to shoot you dead, here and now. How wrong you are! Because after I detonate the nuclear device, after I destroy CI headquarters, I’m going to take you back to whatever is left of CI. I’ll shoot you there. And so, having killed Fadi, the world’s most notorious terrorist, Martin Lindros will become a national hero. And now that I’ve killed the
DCI
, who do you think a grateful president will elevate to the post?”

He laughed again. “I’ll be running the agency, Bourne. I’ll be able to remake it in my own image. How’s that for irony?”

At the mention of the fate of CI headquarters, Bourne felt Martin’s voice stirring inside him. Not yet, he thought. Not yet.

“What I find ironic,” he said, “is what happened to Sarah ibn Ashef.”

Fire leapt into Karim’s eyes. He backhanded Bourne across the face. “You who murdered her are not fit to speak my sister’s name!”

“I didn’t murder her,” Bourne said slowly and distinctly.

Karim spat in Bourne’s face.

“I couldn’t have shot her. Both Soraya and I were too far away. We both were using Glock 21s. Sarah ibn Ashef was all the way across the plaza when she was shot dead. As you well know, the Glock is accurate up to twenty-five meters. Your sister was at least fifty meters away when she was killed. I didn’t realize it at the time; everything happened too quickly.”

His face a taut mask, Karim struck Bourne again.

Bourne, having expected the blow, shook it off. “Muta ibn Aziz refreshed my memory, however. He and his brother were in the right position that night. They were at the right distance.”

Karim grabbed Bourne by the throat. “You dare to make a mockery of my sister’s death?” He was fairly shaking with rage. “The brothers were like family. To even insinuate-”

“It’s precisely because they were like family that Abbud ibn Aziz shot your sister to death.”

“I’ll kill you for that!” Karim screamed as he began to strangle Bourne. “I’ll make you wish you’d never been born!”

Tyrone zigzagged the Ninja through the streets, following the limo. He could hear the bullets whizzing past them. He knew what it was like to be shot at; he knew the agony of having a loved one shot dead in a drive-by. His only defense was study. He knew bullets the way his crew knew gangsta rappers or porn stars. He knew the characteristics of every caliber, every Parabellum, every hollow-point. His own Walther
PPK
was loaded with hollow-cavity bullets-like hollow-points on steroids. When they impacted with a soft target-human flesh, for instance-they expanded to the point of disintegration. The target felt like he had been hit by an M-80. Needless to say, the internal damage was extreme.

The man was shooting .45s at them, but his range was limited, his accuracy low. Still, Tyrone knew he needed to find a way to stop the shooting altogether.

“Look up ahead,” Soraya urgently said into his ear. “See that black-glass building six blocks away? That’s CI headquarters.”

Putting on another burst of speed, Tyrone brought the Ninja up very fast on the limo’s left flank. This brought them within range of the Luger, but the distance was also of benefit to him.

Drawing her
ASP
pistol, Soraya aimed and fired in one motion. The hollow-core struck the terrorist full in the face. There was an explosion of blood and bone out the open window.

They killed Sarah ibn Ashef and covered up their complicity,” Bourne managed to get out. “They did it to protect you and Fadi. Because sweet, innocent Sarah ibn Ashef was carrying on a torrid love affair.”

“Liar!”

Bourne was having trouble breathing, but he had to keep talking. He’d known going into this that psychology was his best weapon against a man like Karim, the only one that might bring him victory. “She hated what you and Fadi had become. She made her decision. She turned her back on her Bedouin heritage.”

He saw something explode onto Karim’s face.

“Shut up!” Karim cried. “These are the foulest of lies! Of course they are!”

But Bourne could sense that he was unsuccessfully trying to convince himself. He had finally put all the pieces of Sarah’s death together, and it was killing him.

“My sister was the moral core of my family! The core you destroyed! Her murder set my brother and me on this course. You brought this death and destruction on yourself!”

Bourne was already on the move. He stepped backward and planted his heel hard onto the instep of the man directly behind him. As he did so, he twisted his torso, breaking the hold of the man on his right. Burying a cocked elbow into the solar plexus of the man on his left, he struck outward with the edge of his other hand, slashing it into the side of the third man’s neck.

He heard the crack as the vertebrae fractured. The man went down. By this time the man directly behind him had thrown his arms around Bourne, gripping him tight. Bourne bent double, sending the man head-over-heels into Karim.

The man on his left was still bent over, trying to catch his breath. Scooping up a Luger that had fallen to the floor, Bourne slammed the butt into the crown of his head. The man he’d sent tumbling into Karim had drawn his gun. Bourne shot him and he collapsed in a heap.

That left Karim. He was on his knees, the attachй case directly in front of him. His eyes were red with a kind of madness that sent a shiver down Bourne’s spine. Once or twice before, Bourne had seen a man teetering on the edge of madness, and he knew that Karim was capable of anything.

As he was thinking of this, Karim produced a small stainless-steel square. Bourne recognized it instantly as a remote detonator.

Karim held the device aloft, his thumb pressed against a black button. “I know you, Bourne. And knowing you, I own you. You won’t shoot me, not while I can detonate twenty kilos of C-Four in the parking ramp under CI headquarters.”

There was no time for thought, no time for second guesses. Bourne heard Martin’s ghostly whisper in his mind. He pointed the Luger and shot Karim in the throat. The bullet passed through the soft tissue, then severed the spinal column. In near-paralyzing pain, Karim sat down hard. He stared at Bourne, disbelieving. He tried to work his fingers, but they wouldn’t respond.

His eyes, the light in them fading, found the knuckles of one of his downed men. Bourne, understanding what was about to happen, lunged toward him, but with one last effort, Karim toppled over.

The detonator slammed against the bared knuckles.

At last, Bourne was able to let Karim go. At last, Martin’s voice in his head was silent. Bourne stared down at Karim’s right eye-Martin’s eye-and thought about his dead friend. Soon enough he’d send a dozen red roses to Moira, soon enough he’d take Martin’s ashes to the Cloisters in New York.

One thing lingered in his mind, like an angler’s unbaited hook. When he had the chance, why hadn’t Karim tried to detonate the nuke? Why the limo, which would have a far more limited effect?

He turned, saw the attachй case lying on the concrete floor. The snaps were open. Had Karim done that in the vain hope of engaging the timer? He crouched down, about to close the snaps, when a chill passed through him, the force of it making his teeth chatter.

He opened the case. Peering inside, he searched for the timer, seeing that it was indeed inactive. The
LED
was dark, the wires disconnected. Then what . . . ?

Probing beneath the nest of wires, he looked closer and saw something that injected the chill into his bones. A secondary timer had been activated when Karim had popped the snaps. A secondary timer that Veintrop had installed, but deliberately never told them about.

Bourne sat back on his haunches, beads of sweat rolling down his spine. It looked as if Dujja-and the doctor-were going to get their revenge after all.

FOUR
MINUTES
and one second. That was the amount of time Bourne had left, according to the readout of the secondary timer.

He closed his eyes, conjured up an image of Veintrop’s hands working on the timer. He could see every move the doctor had made, every twist of the wrist, every curl of a finger. He’d needed no tools. There were six wires: red, white, black, yellow, blue, green.

Bourne remembered where they had been attached to the primary timer and in what order Veintrop had disconnected them. Twice, Veintrop had reattached the black wire-first to the terminal on which the end of the white one had been wound, then on the terminal for the red.

Remembering what Veintrop had done wasn’t Bourne’s problem. Though he saw that the secondary timer, like the primary, was powered by another set of six color-coded wires, the two were physically different. As a consequence, none of the terminals to which the wires were attached was in the same place.

Pulling out his cell, Bourne called Feyd al-Saoud’s number in the hope that he could get Veintrop to tell him the truth about deactivating the secondary timer. There was no answer. Bourne wasn’t surprised. Miran Shah, mountainous as it was, was a disaster for cell service. Still, it had been worth a try.

3:01.

Veintrop had started with the blue wire, then the green. Bourne’s fingertips gripped the blue wire, about to unwind it from its terminal. Still, he hesitated. Why, he asked himself, would the secondary timer deactivate in the same way? Veintrop had designed this ingenious trap. The secondary timer would come into play only if the primary had been disabled. Therefore, it would make no sense to design it to be disabled in the same way.

Bourne lifted his hands free of the secondary timer.

2:01.

The question here was not how to deactivate the timer; it was how Veintrop’s fiendish mind worked. If the primary had been disabled, it would mean that someone had known the right order in which to detach the wires. In the secondary, the order in which the wires needed to be detached could be reversed, or even scrambled in so many possible combinations it would be virtually impossible to stumble upon the right one before inadvertently detonating the nuclear device.

1:19.

The time for speculation had passed. He had to make a decision, and it had to be the right one. He decided to reverse the order; he grasped the red wire, about to unwind it when his keen eye spotted something. He leaned in closer, studying the secondary timer in a different way. Pushing aside the nest of colored wires, he discovered that the timer was attached to the main part of the device in a wholly different way than was the primary.

:49.

Bourne tipped the primary out of its niche, the better to see what was underneath. Then he pulled it free of the detonator, to which it was attached by a single wire. Now he saw the secondary timer unimpeded. It was resting directly against the detonator. The trouble was, he couldn’t see where the two were attached.

:27.

He moved the wires away, careful not to detach any of them. Using a fingernail, he lifted the right edge of the secondary timer up and away from the detonator. Nothing.