He felt himself tumbling into darkness, even deeper water. And then, quite suddenly and terrifyingly, he was being pulled. By Lee-Lee? he wondered in a panic.
All at once he felt the warmth of another body, large and, despite its wounds, still immensely powerful. He felt Bourne’s arm circle his waist, the surge of Bourne’s legs as he kicked them out of the swift current into which Khan had fallen, driving them upward toward the surface.
Khan seemed to be crying, or at least crying out, but when they breached the surface and made for the far shore, Khan struck out, as if he wanted nothing more than to punish Bourne, to beat him senseless. But all he could manage at the moment was to tear the encircling arm from around his waist and glare at Bourne as they pulled themselves against the stone embankment.
“What did you think you were doing?” Khan said. “You almost caused me to drown!”
Bourne opened his mouth to answer him, but apparently thought better of it. Instead, he pointed downriver to where a vertical iron rose out of the water. Across the deep blue water of the Danube, fire trucks, ambulances and police cars still ringed the Humanistas, Ltd., building. Crowds had joined the knots of evacuated employees, surging like surf along the sidewalks, spilling through the streets, hanging out windows, craning their necks for a better angle. Boats sailing up and down the river were converging on the spot and even though members of the police force waved them away, the passengers rushed to the railing to get a closer look at what they thought might be a disaster in the making. But they were too late. It appeared that whatever fires had been started by the explosion in the elevator shaft had been extinguished.
Bourne and Khan, sticking to the shadows of the embankment, made their way to the ladder, which they climbed as quickly as they could. Lucky for them, all eyes were on the commotion at the Humanistas, Ltd., building. Several yards away, a section of the embankment was under repair and they were able to crawl into the sheltering shadows below street level but above the water-line, where the concrete had become undermined and was now shored up with pillars of heavy timber.
“Give me your phone,” Khan said. “Mine’s waterlogged.”
Bourne unwrapped Conklin’s cell phone and handed it over.
Khan dialed Oszkar’s cell phone and, when he reached him, told him where they were and what they required. He listened for a moment and then said to Bourne.
“Oszkar, my contact here in Budapest, is chartering us a flight. And he’s getting you some antibiotics.”
Bourne nodded. “Now let’s see how good he really is. Tell him we need the schematics for the Oskjuhlid Hotel in Reykjavik.”
Khan glared at him and for a moment Bourne was afraid that he was going to hang up simply out of spite. He bit his lip. He’d have to remember to talk to Khan in a less confrontational manner.
Khan told Oszkar what they needed. “It’ll take about an hour,” he said.
“He didn’t say ‘impossible’?” Bourne said.
“Oszkar never says ‘impossible.’”
“My contacts couldn’t have done better.”
A chill and fitful wind had sprung up, forcing them to move farther into their makeshift cave. Bourne took the opportunity to assess the damage Spalko had inflicted on him; Khan had done well in ministering to the punctures, which were numerous on his arms, chest and legs. Khan still had on his jacket. He now took it off and shook it out. As he did so, Bourne saw that the inside was composed of a number of pockets, all of which looked filled.
“What d’you have in there?” he asked.
“Tricks of the trade,” Khan said unhelpfully. He retreated into his own world by using Bourne’s cell phone.
“Ethan, it’s me,” he said.
“Is everything all right?”
“That depends,” Hearn said. “In the mêlé, I discovered that my office was bugged.”
“Does Spalko know who you work for?”
“I never mentioned your name. Anyway, mostly my calls to you were out of the office.”
“Still, it would be wise for you to leave.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Hearn said. “I’m happy to hear your voice. After the explosions I didn’t know what to think.”
“Have a little faith,” Khan said. “How much d’you have on him?”
“Enough.”
“Take everything you have and get out now. I will have my revenge on him no matter what happens.”
He heard Hearn take a breath, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I want a backup. If for some reason you can’t get the material to me, I want you to contact—hold on a moment.” He turned to Bourne and said, “Is there someone at the Agency who can be trusted with intel on Spalko?”
Bourne shook his head, then immediately reconsidered. He thought about what Conklin had told him about the Deputy Director—that he was not only fair-minded but that he was his own man. “Martin Lindros,” he said.
Khan nodded and repeated the name to Hearn, then he closed the connection and handed back the phone.
Bourne felt in a quandary. He wanted to find some way to connect with Khan, but he didn’t know how. Finally, he hit upon the idea of asking him how he had reached the interrogation room. He felt a relief when Khan began to talk. He told Bourne about hiding in the sofa, the explosion in the elevator shaft and his escape from the bolted room. He did not, however, mention Annaka’s treachery.
Bourne listened with mounting fascination, but even so, part of him remained detached, as if this conversation was happening to someone else. He was shying away from Khan; the psychic wounds were too raw. He recognized that in his present debilitated state, he was as yet mentally unprepared to tackle the questions and doubts that flooded him. And so the two of them talked fitfully and awkwardly, always skirting the central issue that lay between them like a castle that could be sieged but not taken.
An hour later Oszkar arrived in his company van with towels and blankets and new clothes, along with an antibiotic for Bourne. He gave them a Thermos of hot coffee to drink. They climbed into the backseat, and while they changed, he bundled up their torn and sodden clothes, all except Khan’s remarkable jacket. Then he gave them bottled water and food, which they wolfed down.
If he was surprised at the sight of Bourne’s wounds, he didn’t show it, and Khan assumed that he’d worked out that the assault had been a success. He presented Bourne with a lightweight laptop computer.
“The schematics for every system and subsystem in the hotel have been downloaded to the hard drive,” he said, “as well as maps of Reykjavik and the surrounding area and some basic information I thought might come in handy.”
“I’m impressed.” Bourne said this to Oszkar, but he meant it for Khan, too.
Martin Lindros got the call just after eleven A.M. Eastern Daylight Time. He jumped into his car and made the fifteen-minute drive to George Washington Hospital in just under eight minutes. Detective Harry Harris was in the E.R. Lindros used his credentials to cut through the red tape so that one of the harried residents took him over to the bed. Lindros pulled aside the curtain that ran around three sides of the emergency room station, pulled it shut behind him.
“What the hell happened to you?” he said.
Harris eyed him as best he could from his propped-up position on the bed. His face was puffy and discolored. His upper lip was split and there was a gash under his left eye that had been stitched.
“I got fired—that’s what happened.”
Lindros shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“The National Security Advisor called my boss. Directly. Herself. She demanded I be fired. Dismissed without compensation or pension. This is what he told me when he summoned me to his office yesterday.”
Lindros’ hands curled into fists. “And then?”
“What d’you mean? He fired my ass. Disgraced me after the spotless career I’ve had.”
“I mean,” Lindros said, “how did you wind up here?”
??
?Oh, that.” Harris turned his head to one side, looking at nothing. “I got drunk, I guess.”
“You guess?”
Harris turned back to him, his eyes blazing. “I got very drunk, okay? I think it was the least I deserved.”
“But you got more than that.”
“Yah. There was an argument with a couple of bikers, if I remember right, which escalated into something of a brawl.”
“I suppose you think you deserved to get beaten to a pulp.”
Harris said nothing.
Lindros passed a hand across his face. “I know I promised you I’d take care of this, Harry. I thought I had it under control, even the DCI had come around, more or less. I just didn’t figure on the NSA making a preemptive strike.”
“Fuck her,” Harris said. “Fuck everyone.” He laughed bitterly. “It’s like my ma used to say, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’”
“Look, Harry, I never would’ve cracked this Schiffer thing without you. I’m not going to abandon you now. I’ll get you out of this.”
“Yeah? I’d like the fuck to know how.”
“As Hannibal, one of my military icons, once famously said, ‘We will either find a way or make one.’”
When they were ready, Oszkar drove them to the airport. Bourne, whose body was racked with pain, was happy to let someone else drive. Still, he remained on operational alert. He was pleased to see that Oszkar was using his mirrors to check for tags. No one appeared to be following them.
Up ahead, he could see the airport’s control tower, and a moment later Oszkar turned off the motorway. There were no cops in sight. Nothing seemed out of place. Still, he could feel the vibrations start up inside him.
No one came for them as they cruised through the airport roads, heading toward the charter services airfield. The aircraft was waiting, ready and fueled. They got out of the van. Before he left, Bourne gripped Oszkar’s hand. “Thanks again.”
“No problem,” Oszkar said with a smile. “It all goes on the bill.”
He drove off and they went up the stairs and into the aircraft.
The pilot welcomed them aboard, then pulled up the stairs and closed and locked the door. Bourne told him their destination and five minutes later they were taxiing down the runway, lifting off for their two-hour, ten-minute flight to Reykjavik.
“We’ll be coming up on the fishing boat in three minutes,” the pilot said.
Spalko adjusted the electronic earbud, picked up Sido’s refrigerated box and went to the rear of the plane and shrugged himself into the harness. As he tightened the cinches, he stared at the back of Peter Sido’s head. Sido was handcuffed to his seat. One of Spalko’s armed men was in the seat next to him.
“You know where to take him,” he said softly to the pilot.
“Yessir. It won’t be anywhere near Greenland.”
Spalko went to the rear doorway, signaled to his man, who rose and walked back up the narrow aisle to join him.
“Are you all right for fuel?”
“Yessir,” the pilot answered. “My calculation’s right on the money.”
Spalko peered out the small round window in the door. They were lower now, the North Atlantic blue-black, the wave crests a sure sign of its vaunted turbulence.
“Thirty seconds, sir,” the pilot said. “There’s a pretty stiff wind from the north-northeast. Sixteen knots.”
“Roger that.” Spalko could feel the slowing of their airspeed. He was wearing a 7-mm survival dry suit under his clothes. Unlike a diver’s wet suit, which relied on a thin layer of water between the body and the neoprene suit to keep body temperature up, this was sealed at the feet and the wrists to keep the water out. Inside the trilaminate shell he wore a Thermal Protection System Thinsulate undersuit for added protection against the cold. Still, unless he timed his landing perfectly, the impact of the freezing water could paralyze him and even with the protection of the suit that would prove fatal. Nothing could go wrong. He attached the box to his left wrist with a locking chain and drew on his dry gloves.
“Fifteen seconds,” the pilot said. “Wind constant.”
Good, no gusts, Spalko thought. He nodded to his man, who pulled down on the huge lever and swung open the door. The howling of the wind filled the interior of the aircraft. There was nothing below him but thirteen thousand feet of air, and then the ocean, which would be as hard as concrete if he hit it at the rate of free fall.
“Go!” the pilot said.
Spalko jumped. There was a rushing in his ears, the wind against his face. He arched his body. Within eleven seconds he was falling at 110 miles per hour, terminal velocity. And yet he didn’t feel as if he was falling. Rather, the sensation was one of something softly pressing against him.
He looked down, saw the fishing boat and, using the air pressure, moved himself horizontally to compensate for the sixteen-knot north-by-northeast wind. Aligning himself, he checked his wrist altimeter. At twenty-five hundred feet he pulled the rip cord, felt the gentle tug at his shoulders, the soft rustle of nylon as the canopy deployed above him. All at once the ten square feet of air resistance his body had provided had been transformed into 250 square feet of drag. He was now descending at a leisurely sixteen feet per second.
Above him was the luminous bowl of the sky; below him spread the vastness of the North Atlantic, restless, heaving, sheened to beaten brass by the late afternoon sunlight. He saw the fishing boat bobbing and, far off, the jutting curve of the Icelandic peninsula upon which Reykjavik was built. The wind was a constant tug, and for a time he was busy compensating by repeatedly flaring the canopy. He breathed deeply, relishing the pillowy sensation of the drop.
He seemed suspended, then in a shell of endless blue he thought of the meticulous planning, the years of hard work, maneuvering and manipulation by which he’d reached this point, what he’d come to view as the pinnacle of his life. He thought of his year in America, in tropical Miami, the painful procedures to remake and remodel his ruined face. He had to admit that he’d enjoyed telling Annaka the story of his fictional brother, but then again, how else would he have explained his presence in the asylum? He could never tell her that he was having a passionate affair with her mother. It was a simple matter to bribe the doctors and nurses into giving him private time with their patient. How utterly corrupt human beings are, he reflected. Much of his success had been built on taking advantage of that principle.
What an amazing woman Sasa had been! He’d never met her like before or since. Quite naturally, he’d made the assumption that Annaka would be like her mother. Of course, he’d been much younger then and his foolishness could be forgiven.
What would Annaka have thought, he wondered now, if he’d told her the truth, that years ago he’d slaved for a crime boss, a vindictive, sadistic monster who’d sent him out on a vendetta knowing full well that it could be a trap. It was—and Spalko’s face was the result of it. He’d gotten his revenge on Vladimir, but not in the heroic manner he’d painted for Zina. It was shameful what he’d done, but in those days he’d lacked the power to act on his own. But not now.
He was more than five hundred feet in the air when the wind abruptly reversed itself. He began to sail away from the boat, and he worked the canopy to minimize the effect. Still, he was unable to reverse his course. Below him, he could see the flash of reflection on board the fishing boat and knew that the crew was carefully monitoring his descent. The boat began to move with him.
The horizon was higher, and now the ocean was coming up fast, filling the entire world as his perspective changed. The wind suddenly died, and he came down, flaring his canopy at just the right instant, making his landing as soft as possible.
His legs went in first and then he was under the water. Even mentally prepared as he was, the shock of the freezing water struck a hammerblow that drove all the breath from him. The weight of the refrigerated box pulled him quickly under, but he compensated with powerful, practiced scissorkicks. He surfaced with a swing of his head and
took a deep breath while he shed his harness.
He could hear the grinding churn of the fishing boat’s engines echoing in the deep, and without even bothering to look, he struck out in that direction. The swells were so high and the current so swift that he soon abandoned the notion of swimming as futile. By the time the boat came alongside, he was near to being spent. Without the protection of the dry suit, he knew he would have gone into hypothermia by now.
A crew member threw him a line and a rope ladder was cast over the side. He grabbed the line and held on with all his strength as they pulled him to the side where the ladder hung down. He climbed up it, the ocean a constant drag on him until the very last instant.
A strong hand reached down, helping him over the side. He looked up, saw a face with piercing blue eyes and thick blond hair.
“La illaha ill Allah.” Hasan Arsenov said. “Welcome aboard, Shaykh,” Spalko stood back while crew members wrapped him in absorbent blankets. “La illaha ill Allah,” he replied. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“When I first looked at myself in the mirror after I’d bleached my hair,” Arsenov said, “I didn’t either.”
Spalko peered at the terrorist leader’s face. “How do the contact lenses feel?”
“None of us have had a problem.” Arsenov could not take his eyes off the metal box the Shaykh was holding. “It’s here.”
Spalko nodded. He glanced over Arsenov’s shoulder and saw Zina standing in the last of the sunlight. Her golden hair streamed out behind her and her cobalt eyes watched his with an avid intensity.
“Head for shore,” Spalko told the crew. “I want to change into dry clothes.”
He went below into the forward cabin, where clothes had been neatly stacked on a berth. A pair of sturdy black shoes were on the deck beneath. He unlocked the box and set it on the berth. As he stripped off his sopping clothes and peeled off the dry suit, he glanced at his wrist to see how badly the cuff had abraded his skin. Then he rubbed his palms together until he’d returned full circulation to his hands.