They were amusing for a while, but only for a while. He took this thought with him down into the bottomless chasm of a deep and untroubled sleep, and when he awoke, Zina was gone, returned to the side of the unsuspecting Hasan Arsenov.
At dawn, the five of them piled into a brace of Range Rovers, which had been provisioned and were driven by members of the Humanistas team, and headed south out of the city toward the great unwashed slum that extended like an festering canker on the flank of Nairobi. No one spoke and they had eaten only lightly, for a pall of hideous tension gripped them all, even Spalko.
Though the morning was clear, a toxic haze hung low over the sprawling slum, ready evidence of the lack of proper sanitation and the ever-present specter of cholera. There were ramshackle structures, mean tin and cardboard huts, some wooden ones, as well as squat concrete buildings that could have been mistaken for bunkers except for the zigzag lines of laundry strung outside, flapping in the gritty air. As well, there were mounds of bulldozed earth, raw and enigmatic until the passing party saw the scorched and charcoaled remains of fire-gutted dwellings, shoes with their soles burned off, tatters of a blue dress. These few artifacts, evidence of recent history, which was all that existed here, lent a particularly forlorn aspect to the ugliness of the grinding poverty. If there was a life to be had here, it was fitful, chaotic, dismal beyond either word or thought. All were struck by the sense of a terminal night that existed here even in the light of a new morning. There was a fatedness to the sprawl that made them recall the bazaar, the black market nature of the city’s economy they felt was in some obscure way responsible for the depressing landscape through which they crawled, slowed by the thick crowds that overflowed the cracked sidewalks out into the rutted dirt streets. Traffic lights didn’t exist; even if they had, the party would have been stopped by hordes of stinking beggars or merchants hawking their pathetic wares.
At length they arrived at more or less the center of the slum, where they entered a gutted two-story building reeking of smoke. Ash was everywhere inside, white and soft as ground bones. The drivers brought in the provisions, which were contained in what appeared to be two rectangular steamer trucks.
Inside were silver-skinned HAZMAT suits which, at Spalko’s direction, they donned. The suits contained their own self-contained breathing systems. Spalko then removed the NX 20 from its case inside one of the trunks, carefully fitted the two pieces together as the four Chechen rebels gathered around to watch. Handing it to Hasan Arsenov for a moment, Spalko drew out the small, heavy box given to him by Dr. Peter Sido. With great care, he unlocked it. They all stared down at the glass vial. It was so small, so deadly. Their breathing slowed, grew labored, as if they were already afraid to draw breath.
Spalko directed Arsenov to hold the NX 20 at arm’s length. He flipped open a titanium panel on top, placed the vial into the loading chamber. The NX 20 couldn’t be fired yet, he explained. Dr. Schiffer had built in a number of safeguards against accidental or premature dispersal. He pointed out the airtight seal that, with the chamber full, would be activated when he closed and locked the top panel. He did this now, then he took the NX 20 from Arsenov and led them up the interior flight of stairs, still standing, despite the ravages of the fire, only because it was made of concrete.
On the second floor they crowded against a window. Like all the others in the building, its glass had been shattered; all that was left was the frame. Through it, they watched the halt and the lame, the famine-stricken, the diseased. Flies buzzed, a three-legged dog squatted and defecated in an open-air market where used goods were piled in the dust. A child ran naked through the street, crying. An old woman hunching along, hawked and spat.
These sights were of only peripheral interest to the party. They were studying Spalko’s every move, listening to his every word with a concentration that bordered on the compulsive. The mathematical precision of the weapon worked like a magical counter-spell to the disease that seemed to have conjured itself into the air.
Spalko showed them the two triggers on the NX 20—a small one just forward of the larger one. The small one, he told them, injected the payload from the loading chamber into the firing chamber. Once that, too, was sealed by pressing this button, here, on the left side of weapon, the NX 20 was ready to be fired. He pulled the small trigger, then pressed the button, and could feel within the weapon a slight stirring, the first intimation of death.
The muzzle of the thing was blunt and ugly, but its bluntness was practical as well. Unlike conventional weapons, the NX 20 needed only to be aimed in the most general way, he pointed out. He stuck the muzzle through the window. They all held their breath as his finger curled around the large trigger.
Outside, life went on in its random, disorderly fashion. A young man held a bowl of maize-meal porridge under his chin, scooping up the glop with the first two fingers of his right hand while a group of half-starved people watched with unnaturally large eyes. An impossibly thin girl on a bicycle passed by and a pair of toothless old men stared at the packed earth of the street as if reading there the sad story of their lives.
It was no more than a soft hiss, at least that was how it sounded to each of them secure and safe inside their HAZMAT suits. There was, otherwise, no outward sign of the dispersal. This was as Dr. Schiffer had predicted.
The party watched tensely as the seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness. Every sense seemed heightened. They heard the sonorous tolling of their own pulse in their ears, felt the heavy beat of their hearts. They found that they were holding their breath.
Dr. Schiffer had said that within three minutes they would see the first signs that the disperser had worked properly. It was more or less the last thing he’d said before Spalko and Zina had dropped his near-lifeless body down into the labyrinth.
Spalko, who’d been following the second hand of his watch as it swept toward the three-minute mark, now looked up. He was riveted by what he saw. A dozen people had dropped before the first scream sounded. It was quickly choked off, but others took up the ululating cry, only to drop, writhing, in the street. Chaos and silence as death crept outward in a gathering spiral. There was no hiding from it, no way to avoid it, and no one escaped, even those who tried to run.
He signed to the Chechens and they followed him down the concrete stairs. The drivers were ready and waiting as Spalko broke down the NX 20. The moment he stowed it, they snapped closed the trunks, brought them out to the waiting Range Rovers.
The party took a tour of the street, then the adjacent ones. They walked four blocks in every direction, always seeing the same result. Death and dying, more death and dying. They returned to the vehicles, the taste of triumph in their mouths. The Range Rovers started up the moment they were settled and took them over the entire area of the half-mile-square radius Dr. Schiffer had told Spalko was the NX 20’s dispersal range. Spalko was gratified to see that the doctor had neither lied nor exaggerated.
By the time the payload had run its course an hour from now, how many people would be dead or dying? he wondered. He’d stopped counting after a thousand, but he guessed it would be three times that amount, perhaps as much as five times.
Before they left the city of the dead, he gave the order and his drivers started the fires, using a potent accelerant. Immediately, sheets of flame flicked skyward, spreading quickly.
The fire was good to see. It would cover what had happened here this morning, for no one must know, not, at least until after their mission at the Reykjavik summit was completed.
In just forty-eight hours it would be, Spalko thought, exultant. Nothing could stop them.
Now the world is mine.
Book Three
Chapter Twenty-One
“I think there may be internal bleeding,” Annaka said, looking again at the deeply discolored swelling of Bourne’s side. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
“You must be joking,” he said. Indeed, the pain was much worse; every time he breathed, he felt as
if a couple of ribs had been staved in. But a trip to the hospital was out of the question; he was a wanted man.
“All right,” she conceded. “A doctor, then.” And raised a hand, anticipating his objection. “My father’s friend, Istvan, is discreet. My father used him from time to time without consequence.”
Bourne shook his head, said, “Go to a pharmacy if you must, nothing more.”
Before he had a chance to change his mind, Annaka grabbed her coat and purse, promising to be back shortly.
In a way he was glad to be rid of her temporarily, he needed to be alone with his thoughts. Curled up on the sofa, he drew the eiderdown closer around him. His mind seemed to be on fire. He was convinced that Dr. Schiffer was the key. He had to find him, for once he did, he’d find the person who had ordered Alex and Mo’s murders, the person who had set him up. The problem was Bourne was quite certain he didn’t have much time left. Schiffer had been missing for some time now. Molnar had been dead two days. If, as Bourne feared, he’d disclosed Schiffer’s whereabouts under articulated interrogation, then Bourne would have to assume that Schiffer was by now in enemy hands, which would mean that the enemy also had in his possession whatever it was that Schiffer had invented, some sort of biological weapon, code-named NX 20, to which Leonard Fine, Conklin’s conduit, had reacted so strongly when he’d mentioned it.
Who was the enemy? The only name he had was Stepan Spalko, an internationally renowned humanitarian. And yet, according to Khan, Spalko was the man who had ordered the murders of Alex and Mo and had set Bourne up as the murderer. Khan could be lying, and why not? If he wanted to get to Spalko for his own reasons, he’d hardly announce them to Bourne.
Khan!
The very thought of him caused Bourne to be flooded with unwanted emotion. With effort, he concentrated on his rage against his own government. They’d lied to him—colluded in a coverup to keep him from the truth. Why? What were they trying to hide? Did they believe that Joshua might be alive? If so, why wouldn’t they want him to know? What was it they were doing? He pressed his hands to his head. His vision seemed to lose its perspective—things that had seemed close at hand a moment ago now appeared far away. He thought he might be losing his mind. With an inarticulate cry, he threw the eiderdown off him and rose, ignoring the flash of pain in his side as he stalked to where he’d hidden his ceramic gun beneath his jacket. He took it up in his hand. Unlike the reassuring heft of a steel gun, this was as light as a feather. He held it by the grips, curled his forefinger through the trigger guard. He stared at it a long time, as if through sheer force of will he could conjure up the officials buried deep inside the military responsible for deciding not to tell him that they’d never found Joshua’s body, deciding it was simply easier to declare that he’d been killed when they didn’t know for a fact if he was actually dead or alive.
Slowly the pain returned, a universe of agony with every breath he took, forcing him to return to the sofa, where he once again wrapped himself in the eiderdown. And in the quiet of the apartment, the thought, unbidden, came again: What if Khan was telling the truth—what if he was Joshua? And the answer, terrible and unalterable: Then he was an assassin, a brutal murderer without remorse or guilt, utterly disconnected from any human emotion.
All at once Jason Bourne put his head down, as close to tears as he’d ever been since Alex Conklin had created him decades ago.
When Kevin McColl had been assigned the Bourne sanction, he’d been on top of Ilona, a young Hungarian woman of his acquaintance, as uninhibited as she was athletic. She could do wonderful things with her legs, was, in fact, doing them when the call came in.
As it happened, he and Ilona were in the Kiraly Turkish Baths on Fo utca. It being Saturday, a woman’s day, she’d had to sneak him in, which, he had to admit, had been part of the excitement. Like everyone else in his position, he’d very quickly gotten used to living beyond the law—to being the law.
With a grunt of frustration, he unwound himself from her and picked up his cell phone. There was no question of not answering it; when it rang it was for a sanction. He listened without comment to the voice of the DCI on the other end of the line. He’d have to go now. The sanction was urgent, the target within range.
And so, as he wistfully watched the gleam of Ilona’s sweat-slicked skin in the jewel-toned light reflected off the mosaic tiles, he began to dress. He was a huge man, with the physique of a Midwestern football lineman and a flat imperturbable face. He was obsessed with weight training, and it showed. His muscles rippled with every move he made.
“I’m not finished,” Ilona said, her huge dark eyes drinking him in.
“Neither am I,” McColl said, leaving her where she lay.
Two jets stood on the tarmac of Nairobi’s Nelson Airport. Both belonged to Stepan Spalko; both had the logo of Humanistas, Ltd. on fuselage and tail. Spalko had flown in from Budapest on the first one. The second had been used by his Humanistas support staff, who were now inside the jet that would return him to Budapest. The other jet would be taking Arsenov and Zina to Iceland where they’d be rendezvousing with the rest of the terrorist cadre flying in from Chechnya by way of Helsinki.
Spalko stood facing Arsenov. Zina was a pace behind Arsenov’s left shoulder. He, no doubt, thought her position one of deference, but Spalko knew better. Her eyes smoldered as she drank in the Shaykh.
“You’ve lived up to the letter of your promise, Shaykh,” Arsenov said. “The weapon will bring us victory in Reykjavik, of that there can be no question.”
Spalko nodded. “Soon you’ll have everything that’s due you.”
“The depth of our gratitude seems quite inadequate.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Hasan.” Spalko drew out a leather briefcase, unlocked it. “Passports, ID tags, maps, diagrams, the latest photos, everything you need.” He handed over the contents. “The rendezvous with the boat will be at three-hundred hours tomorrow.” He looked at Arsenov. “May Allah lend you strength and courage. May Allah guide your mailed fist.”
As Arsenov turned away, preoccupied with his precious cargo, Zina said, “May our next meeting lead to a great future, Shaykh.”
Spalko smiled. “The past will die,” he said, speaking volumes with his eyes, “in order to make way for that great future.”
Zina, laughing to herself in silent pleasure, followed Hasan Arsenov as he mounted the metal ladder into the jet.
Spalko watched the door close behind them, then he crossed to his jet, waiting patiently on the tarmac. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed a number and, when he heard the familiar voice on the other end of the line, said without preamble, “The progress Bourne has been making is an ominous development. I can no longer afford to have Khan kill Bourne in a public way—yes, I know, if he ever meant to kill Bourne. Khan’s a curious creature, a puzzle I’ve never been able to solve. But now that he’s become unpredictable, I’ve got to assume he’s following his own agenda. If Bourne dies now, Khan will fade into the woodwork and not even I will be able to find him. Nothing must interfere with what will take place in two days’ time. Do I make myself clear? Good. Now, listen. There’s only one way to neutralize them both.”
McColl had received not only Annaka Vadas’ name and address—by an extraordinary stroke of luck, just four blocks north of the baths—but also her photo via a jpg file downloaded to his cell phone. As a result, he had no trouble recognizing her when she came out of the entrance to 106–108 Fo utca. He was immediately stirred by her beauty, the authoritative manner of her gait. He watched as she put away her cell phone, unlocked a blue Skoda and slid in behind the wheel.
Just before Annaka inserted her key into the ignition slot, Khan rose from the backseat of the car and said, “I should tell Bourne everything.”
She started but made no attempt to turn around; she was that well trained. Staring at him in the rear-view mirror, she replied shortly, “Tell him what? You don’t know anything.”
“I know enoug
h. I know you’re the one who brought the police to Molnar’s apartment. I know why you did that. Bourne was getting too close to the truth, wasn’t he, getting too close to finding out that Spalko was the one who’d set him up. I’d already told him, but it seems he doesn’t believe anything I say.”
“Why should he? You have no credibility with him. He’s convinced himself you’re part of a vast plot to manipulate him.”
Khan whipped a steely hand over the seatback, gripping her arm, which had slowly moved while she spoke. “Don’t do that.” He took her purse, opened it, removed the gun. “You tried to kill me once. Believe me, you won’t get a second chance.”
She stared at his reflected image. Inside her was a constellation of emotions. “You think I’m lying to you about Jason, but I’m not.”
“What I’d like to know,” he said easily, ignoring her comment, “was how you convinced him you loved your father when, really, you hated his guts.”
She sat mute, breathing slowly, trying to gather her wits. She knew she was in an extremely perilous situation. The question was how was she going to extricate herself.
“How you must’ve rejoiced when he was shot to death,” Khan continued, “though, knowing you as I do, you probably wished you’d been able to shoot him yourself.”
“If you’re going to kill me,” she said tersely, “do it now and spare me your useless chatter.”
With a move like a cobra, he leaned forward, grabbed her by her throat, and at last she looked alarmed, which was, after all, the first thing he was after. “I don’t intend to spare you anything, Annaka. What did you spare me when you had the chance?”
“I didn’t think I needed to baby you.”
“You rarely thought when we were together,” he said, “at least, not about me.”
Her smile was cold. “Oh, I thought about you constantly.”