The Bourne Deception (Jason Bourne 7)

He gave her a slightly embarrassed nod. “Anyway, it’s all pie in the sky,” he said. “I’ve got to get to my office and find a way to reassure Noah that everything’s okay with me.”

Moira’s mind was already spinning out possible scenarios. “Don’t worry about that. You concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the two-way transfer. I’ll take care of Noah.”

After reading everything he could about the rapidly escalating Iran situation in the International Herald Tribune he’d picked up in the lounge in Madrid, Bourne sat brooding all during the flight to Khartoum. Once or twice, he became aware that Tracy was trying to engage him in conversation, but he didn’t care to answer. He was wondering why the possibility of Arkadin surviving his trial at sea hadn’t occurred to him; after all, the precise same thing had happened to him off Marseilles, when he’d been pulled half dead out of the water by the crew of a fishing boat. He’d been nursed back to health by a local doctor, as inveterate a drunk as Dr. Firth, only to discover that the trauma he’d suffered had caused amnesia. His memories of his life had been wiped out. Once in a while something familiar would trigger a shard of memory, but when it did surface, it most often arrived in incomplete fits and starts. Since then he’d struggled to find out who he was, and though many years had passed he seemed no closer to the truth—the identities of Jason Bourne and, to a limited extent, David Webb were all he could remember. It had seemed to him that the path that would lead him to himself lay through his memories on Bali.

But first, there was the matter of Leonid Arkadin to consider. That Arkadin wanted him dead was beyond doubt, but he also intuited that more was going on here than a simple case of revenge. Though he’d learned that nothing with Arkadin was simple, there was an over-arching plan to this particular web in which he found himself that transcended even Arkadin, who seemed to be one strand among many that was leading Bourne to Khartoum.

Whether or not Don Fernando Hererra was in league with Arkadin—and it seemed a sure bet that Arkadin had sent him the photos and audio “incriminating” Boris—was for the moment beside the point. Now that he knew Arkadin was behind the attempt on his life, he had to assume that a trap was being laid for him at 779 El Gamhuria Avenue. Whether that trap was Arkadin’s alone, or whether it included Nikolai Yevsen, the arms dealer, and Noah Perlis, he didn’t yet know. But it was interesting to speculate on what business Noah had with Yevsen. Was it personal or on behalf of Black River? Either way, the two constituted a sinister team, one that he needed to know more about.

And what was Tracy’s role in all this? She had taken possession of the fantastic Goya only after she had electronically transferred the required sum to Don Hererra’s bank account and he had ordered his banker to deposit the funds into a second account, the number of which was unknown to her. That way, Hererra had said with a sly smile, he was assured that the money had actually been delivered and would remain his. His years in the oil fields had turned the Colombian into a sly old fox who considered every angle and planned for every contingency. Bourne thought it ironic that he held a peculiar affection for Hererra even though clearly the Colombian and Arkadin were in some sense allies. He hoped he’d run into Hererra again one day, but in the meantime he needed to deal with Arkadin and Noah Perlis.

The dying sun, red as a fireball, was moving ponderously downward to the earth when Soraya and Amun Chalthoum reached Chysis Military Airdrome. Chalthoum showed his credentials and was directed to a small parking lot. After passing through another security check, they were striding across the tarmac toward the plane Chalthoum had ordered to be fueled and ready to take off when Soraya saw two people walking on a tangent course toward a waiting Air Afrika jet. The woman was thin, blond, and quite striking. She was closer to Soraya so, for a moment, her male companion was blocked from her view. Then the vectors changed as they neared one another. Soraya caught a glimpse of the man’s face and, stricken, felt her knees grow momentarily weak.

Chalthoum, at once noticing her faltering stride, turned back to her.

“What is it, azizti?” he said. “You’ve no blood in your face.”

“It’s nothing.” Soraya breathed deeply and slowly in an attempt to calm herself. But since the new DCI had called and summarily ordered her back to DC without giving her a chance to explain the situation, nothing could calm her now. And then she saw Jason Bourne walking along the tarmac at a military airport outside Cairo. At first she thought, It can’t be him. It must be someone else. But as he neared her and his features became more detailed, she realized there could be no doubt.

My God, my God, she thought. What’s happening? How could Jason be alive?

She had to restrain herself from calling out his name, from rushing up to him and embracing him. He hadn’t contacted her, so there must be a reason—a damn good one, she suspected—he didn’t want her to know that he was alive. He was talking intently with his companion and so hadn’t yet seen her—or if he had, he was pretending that he hadn’t.

On the other hand, she had to find a way to get him the number of her satellite phone. But how to do it without either Amun or Jason’s companion knowing?

Your silence is painful,” Tracy said.

“It’s that bad?” Bourne didn’t look at her, but rather stared straight ahead at the red-and-white fuselage of the Air Afrika jet, waiting like a large and dangerous cat just off the head of the main runway of the military airstrip. He’d spotted Soraya the moment she and the tall, lanky Egyptian had passed through security and come onto the tarmac, and he was trying to ignore her because the last thing he wanted now was for someone from CI—even Soraya—to see him.

“You haven’t said a word for hours.” Tracy sounded genuinely hurt. “It’s as if there’s a glass wall around you.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out the best way of protecting you once we arrive in Khartoum.”

“Protect me from what?”

“Not what. Who,” Bourne said. “Don Hererra lied about the photos and the audio, so who knows what else he’s lied about?”

“Whatever you have going doesn’t have anything to do with me,” Tracy said. “I’m going to stay as far away from your business as I can because, quite frankly, it scares the hell out of me.”

Bourne nodded. “I understand.”

She had the carefully packed Goya safely tucked under her arm. “The difficult part of my job is finished. All that’s left to do now is to deliver the Goya, collect the remainder of my fee from Noah, and fly home.”

It was at that precise moment that Tracy looked up and said, “That exotic-looking woman keeps staring at you. Do you know her?”

25

THERE WAS NO HELP for it, Bourne thought, now that Tracy had noticed. Soraya and the Egyptian were only paces away, so Bourne strode up to Soraya.

“Hello, sis,” he said, kissing her warmly on both cheeks. Then, before she had time to respond, he turned to her companion and held out his hand. “Adam Stone. I’m Soraya’s half brother.”

The Egyptian shook his hand briefly. “Amun Chalthoum.” But his eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t know Soraya had a brother.”

Bourne’s laugh was easy. “I’m the black sheep, I’m afraid. No one in the family likes to talk about me.”

By this time Tracy had come up beside him, and he introduced everyone.

Taking him up on his cue, Soraya said to him, “There’s a problem with Mom’s health I think you ought to know about.”

“Excuse us a moment, would you?” Bourne said to Tracy and Chalthoum.

When the two of them were far enough away to afford them adequate privacy, Soraya said, “Jason, what the hell?” She was still looking at him as if she couldn’t quite believe what her eyes were telling her.

“It’s a long story,” he said, “and we don’t have the time now.” He led Soraya a few more paces away from the other two. “Arkadin is still alive. He almost succeeded in killing me on Bali.”

“No wonder you don’t want anyone to know you’re still alive.??

?

Bourne glanced at Chalthoum. “What are you doing here with that Egyptian?”

“Amun’s with Egyptian intelligence. We’re trying to find out who actually shot down the American jet.”

“I thought the Iranians—”

“Our forensics team determined that it was an Iranian Kowsar 3 missile that brought down the plane,” Soraya said, “but now, inexplicably, it looks as if a cadre of four American military men might have brought it into Egypt through Sudan. That’s why we’re on our way to Khartoum.”

Bourne could feel the strands of the spider’s web coming into sudden focus, and he bent toward Soraya as he said softly and urgently, “Listen carefully. Whatever Arkadin is up to involves both Nikolai Yevsen and Black River. I’ve been wondering what would bring these three together. It could be that the cadre you’re looking for aren’t military per se, but are Black River personnel.” He directed her attention to the red-and-white jet where he and Tracy had been headed. “Air Afrika is rumored to be owned by Yevsen, which would make sense—he needs a way to transship the illegal arms consignments to his clients.”

While Soraya studied the plane, he continued: “If you’re right about the American cadre, then where do you think they could possibly obtain an Iranian Kowsar 3 missile—from the Iranians themselves?” He shook his head. “Yevsen is probably the only arms dealer in the world with enough contacts and power to get one.”

“But why would Black River—?”

“Black River’s only there to do the heavy lifting,” Bourne said. “It’s whoever hired them that’s guiding everything. You’ve read the headlines. I think someone high up in the US government wants to go to war with Iran. You’ll know better than me who it might be.”

“Bud Halliday,” Soraya said. “The secretary of defense.”

“Halliday’s the one who ordered my death.”

She goggled at him for a moment. “Right now this is all speculation, so it’s nothing I can use. I need proof of these connections, so we’ll need to stay in touch. I’m reachable on a sat phone,” she said at length, and rattled off a string of numbers for him to memorize. He nodded, giving her the number of his own sat phone, and was about to break away when she said, “There’s something else. DCI Hart has been killed by a car bomb. A man named M. Errol Danziger is the new DCI and he’s already recalled me from the field.”

“An order you’re clearly refusing to obey. Good for you.”

Soraya grimaced. “Who knows what kind of trouble it’s going to get me into.” She took his arm. “Jason, listen, this is the hardest part. For some reason Moira was with DCI Hart when the car bomb detonated. I know Moira survived the blast, because she checked herself into and out of an ER right afterward. But now she’s gone completely off the grid.” She squeezed his arm. “I thought you’d want to know.”

She kissed him as he had kissed her moments before. As she walked back to the Egyptian, who had clearly become impatient at the delay, Bourne felt as if he had vacated his body. He seemed to be looking down on the three people on the tarmac as if from a great height. He saw Soraya say something to Chalthoum, saw the Egyptian nod, saw them both head toward a small military jet. He saw Tracy staring after them, an expression of both curiosity and consternation on her face; he saw himself standing apart, as still as if he had been suspended in amber. He observed all these things without a trace of emotion or awareness of consequence, flooded as he was by images of Moira in Bali with the sun in her eyes, turning them luminous, lambent, phosphorescent, unforgettable. It was as if in his memory he needed to protect her, or at least keep her safe from the dangers of the outside world. It was an absurd impulse, but, he told himself, a wholly human one. Where was she? How badly was she injured? And over all, the terrifying question loomed: Was the car bomb that killed Veronica Hart meant for Moira? Adding to his concern, when he’d called, her number was out of service, which meant she’d changed phones.

So deep had he sunk into himself that it was several moments before he realized that Tracy was talking to him. She stood facing him, her face a mask of concern.

“Adam, what’s going on? Did your sister give you bad news?”

“What?” He was still slightly distracted by the swirl of emotions that had been loosed from his tight control. “Yes, she told me that yesterday our mother passed away unexpectedly.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

His mouth smiled, though he remained far away. “That’s very kind, but no. There’s nothing anyone can do now.”

M. Errol Danziger had a soul like an angry fist. From adolescence onward, he had made it his business to know everything there was to know about Muslims. He had studied the histories of Persia and the Arabian Peninsula; he spoke both Arabic and Farsi fluently, could recite entire sections of the Qur’an by heart, as well as a multitude of Muslim prayers. He had absorbed the essential differences between Sunni and Shi’a, and despised them both with equal fervor. For years now he had used his knowledge of the Middle East in the service of a destructive force against those who wished his country harm.

His intense—some believed obsessive—antipathy toward Muslims of all stripes might very well have stemmed from his high school years in the South, when a rumor that he harbored Syrian blood raced around the schoolyard, causing him to be the butt of endless jokes and taunting. Finally, inevitably, systematically, he was isolated, then ostracized, from social life. That the rumor was based on the truth—Danziger’s paternal grandfather was of Syrian descent—made his misery complete.

He buried his curdled heart at precisely 8 am when he took formal control of CI. He had still to appear on Capitol Hill, to be asked absurd and irrelevant questions by preening legislators looking to impress their constituents with probing questions fed them by their assistants. But that dog-and-pony show, Halliday had assured him, was a mere formality. The secretary of defense had amassed more than enough votes to push through his confirmation without a struggle or even much debate.

At precisely 8:05 am he convened a meeting of the senior staff in the largest of the conference rooms at CI headquarters, an elongated oval without windows because glass was an excellent carrier of sound waves and an expert with field glasses trained on the room could read lips. Danziger was quite clear as to the attendees: the heads of the seven directorates, their immediate subordinates, and the chiefs of all the departments attached to the various directorates.

The spacious room was illuminated by indirect lights hidden by massive soffits built into the circumference of the ceiling. Specially designed and manufactured carpeting was so dense it absorbed nearly all sound, so that all those present were forced to focus their entire attention on whoever was speaking.

On this particular morning that was M. Errol Danziger, also known as the Arab, who, as he looked around the oval table, saw nothing but pale and anxious faces whose owners were still trying to digest the shocking news of his being anointed by the president as the next DCI. To a man—and of this he was quite certain—they had been expecting one of the seven, most likely Dick Symes, chief of intelligence and the most senior of the heads of the seven directorates, to be convening this meeting.

Which was why his gaze fixed on Symes last, why, as he commenced his inaugural address to the troops, he kept his eyes firmly fixed on Symes. After studying the CI organizational chart, he had made up his mind to reach out to Symes, to make of him an ally, because he would need allies, would need to gather to his side a cadre of the CI faithful whom he could bend to his will, whom he could slowly indoctrinate in the new ways, and who, as disciples of the new religion he meant to bring to CI, would spread the gospel as chosen ones should. They would do his work for him, work that would be too difficult, if not impossible, for him to accomplish on his own. Because his mission was not to replace CI personnel, but to convert from within, until a new CI emerged along the lines of the blueprint Bud Halliday had drawn up for him.

To this end, he had already de

cided to promote Symes to DDCI, after a suitable time. In this way, through flattery and then recruitment, he meant to cement his power at CI.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I suspect you have heard rumors—and here I hope I’m wrong, but in the event I’m not, my aim this morning is to set the record straight. There will be no firings, no transfers, no forced reassignments, although in the natural course of events, there will inevitably be, as we move forward, reassignments, as, I understand, there have always been here, and, indeed, in any organically evolving organization. In preparation for this moment, I’ve studied the hallowed history of CI, and I can confidently state that no one understands the legacy of this great organization better than I do. Let me assure you—and my door is always open for discussion on this and any other topic that may be of concern to you—that nothing will change, that the legacy of the Old Man, who, I might add, I venerated from the time I was a young man fresh out of college, remains paramount in my mind, which leads me to say in all honesty and humility that it is a privilege and an honor to be among you, to become a part of you, to lead this great organization into the future.”

The men ranged around the table sat in complete silence, trying to parse this long-winded preamble while, at the same time, trying to register it on their individual bullshit meters. It was a curious fact that Danziger had absorbed the involuted rhythm of Arabic so thoroughly that it had infected his English, especially when he was addressing a group. Where a word would do, a sentence would present itself; where a sentence would do, a paragraph appeared.

As a palpable feeling of relief washed over the conference room, he sat down, opened the file in front of him, and paged through the first half of it. All at once, he looked up. “Soraya Moore, the director of Typhon, isn’t present because she is currently on assignment. You should know that I’ve canceled that assignment and ordered her to return at once for a thorough debriefing.”

He watched some heads turning in consternation, but there was no murmuring at all. Taking one last glance down at his notes, he said, “Mr. Doll, why isn’t your boss, Mr. Marks, in attendance this morning?”