Now, twenty minutes after Lindros had left them, the agents were bored. They’d eaten their donuts and drunk their Cokes and were sitting in their car grumbling about being stuck here on surveillance duty when their brethren were off running down the notorious agent, David Webb.
“Not David Webb,” the heavier of the two agents said. “The DCI has decreed that we call him by his operational name, Jason Bourne.”
Khan, who was still close enough to hear every word, went rigid. He had, of course, heard of Jason Bourne. For many years, Bourne had had the reputation of being the most accomplished international killer-for-hire on the planet. Khan, knowing his field the way he did, had discounted half the stories as fabrications, the other half as exaggeration. It was simply not possible for one man to have had the daring, the expertise, the sheer animal cunning attributed to Jason Bourne. In fact, a part of him disbelieved in Bourne’s existence altogether.
And yet, here were these CIA agents speaking about David Webb as Jason Bourne! Khan felt as if his brain was about to explode. He was shaken to his very foundation. David Webb wasn’t simply a college professor of linguistics as Spalko’s dossier had claimed, he was one of the field’s great assassins. He was the man who Khan had been playing cat-and-mouse with since yesterday. So many things came together for him, not the least of which was how Bourne had made him in the park. Changing his face and hair and even his gait had always been enough to fool people in the past. But now he was dealing with Jason Bourne, an agent whose skills and expertise at, among other things, disguise were legendary and quite possibly the equal of his own. Bourne wasn’t going to be gulled by the normal tricks of the trade, clever though they might be. Khan understood that he was going to have to raise the level of his game if he was going to win.
Fleetingly, he wondered if Webb’s real identity was another fact Stepan Spalko had known when he had handed Khan the expurgated file. Considering it further, Khan believed that he had to have known. It was the only explanation for why Spalko had arranged to pin the murders of Conklin and Panov on Bourne. It was a classic disinformation technique. As long as the Agency believed that Bourne was responsible, they had no reason to look elsewhere for the real murderer—and surely they would have no chance to uncover the truth about why the two men were killed. Spalko was clearly trying to use Khan as a pawn in some larger game, the way he was using Bourne. Khan had to find out what Spalko was up to—he would not be anyone’s pawn.
To unearth the truth behind the murders, Khan knew he had to get to the tailor. Never mind what he had told the Agency. Having followed Webb—it was still difficult for Khan to think of him as Jason Bourne—he knew the tailor Fine had had plenty of time to cough up what information he possessed. Once during his observation of the scene, the tailor Fine had turned his head, staring out the car window, and Khan had taken the opportunity to look into his eyes. He knew him, then, for a proud and obstinate man. Khan’s Buddhist nature caused him to look upon pride as an undesirable trait, but in this situation he could see that it had served Fine well because the harder the Agency pushed him, the deeper he had dug in his heels. The Agency would get nothing out of him, but Khan knew how to neutralize pride as well as obstinacy.
Taking off his suede jacket, he ripped part of the lining enough so that the agents on stake-out would see him as nothing more than another Lincoln Fine Tailors customer.
Crossing the street, he entered the shop, the musical bell tinkling behind him. One of the Latina women looked up from reading the newspaper comics pages, her lunch, a Tupperware container of beans and rice, half-eaten in front of her. She came over, asked if she could help him. She was voluptuously built, with a firm, wide brow and large chocolate eyes. He told her that as the ripped jacket was a favorite of his, he’d come to see Mr. Fine himself. The woman nodded. She disappeared into the back and, a moment later, came out and sat down at her position without saying another word to Khan.
Several minutes passed before Leonard Fine appeared. He looked much the worse for his long and thoroughly unpleasant morning. Truth to tell, such close and intimate proximity to the Agency as he had endured seemed to have drained him of vitality.
“How can I help you, sir? Maria tells me you have a jacket in need of restoration.”
Khan spread the suede jacket out on the counter inside out.
Fine touched it with the same delicacy with which a doctor palpates an ill patient. “Oh, it’s just the lining. Lucky for you. Suede is almost impossible to repair.”
“Never mind that,” Khan said in a low whisper. “I am here on orders from Jason Bourne. I’m his representative.”
Fine did an admirable job of keeping his face closed. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“He thanks you for your part in his successful escape from the Agency,” Khan went on as if Fine hadn’t spoken. “And he wants you to know that even now two agents are spying on you.”
Fine winced slightly. “I expected as much. Where are they?” His knobby fingers were kneading the jacket anxiously.
“Just across the street,” Khan said. “In the white Ford Taurus.”
Fine was canny enough not to look. “Maria,” he said just loud enough for the Latina to hear, “is there a white Ford Taurus parked across the street?”
Maria turned her head. “Yes, Mr. Fine.”
“Can you see if anyone’s in it?”
“Two men,” Maria said. “Tall, crew-cut. Very Dick Tracy, like the ones who were in here earlier.”
Fine swore under his breath. His eyes rose to meet Khan’s. “Tell, Mr. Bourne…tell him that Leonard Fine says, ‘May God go with him.’”
Khan’s expression was impassive. He found thoroughly distasteful the American habit of invoking God in almost any instance one cared to name. “I need some information.”
“Of course.” Fine nodded gratefully. “Whatever you want.”
Martin Lindros finally understood the meaning of the phrase “So angry he could spit blood.” How was he ever going to face the Old Man, knowing that Jason Bourne had evaded him, not once but twice.
“What the hell d’you think you were doing disobeying my direct orders?” he screamed at the top of his lungs. Noises were echoing in the tunnel underneath Washington Circle as DOT personnel were trying to extricate the semi from the position in which Bourne had lodged it.
“Hey, listen, it was me who spotted the subject leaving the Wal-Mart.”
“And subsequently let him get away!”
“That was you, Lindros. I had an irate district commander chewing up my ass!”
“And that’s another thing!” Lindros yelled. “What the fuck was he doing there?”
“You tell me, wise guy, you’re the one who fucked things up in Alexandria. If you’d bothered to clue me in, I could’ve helped you canvass Old Town. I know it like I know my own face. But no, you’re the fed, you know better, you’re the one running the show.”
“Damn right, I am! I’ve already directed my people to call all personnel stationed at the airports, train terminals, bus stations, rental car agencies to be on the lookout for Bourne.”
“Don’t be absurd, even if you hadn’t tied my hands behind my back, I lack the authority to make those kinds of calls. But I do have my men scouring the area and let’s not forget that it was my detailed last best description of Bourne you disseminated to all the transportation egress points.”
Even though Harris was right, Lindros continued to fume. “I demand to know why the hell you dragged the D.C. Metro Police into it? If you needed more backup, you should’ve come to me.”
“Why the fuck should I come to you, Lindros? Can you give me a reason? Are you my asshole buddy or something? Are we collaborating, anything along that line? Fuck no.” Harris had a disgusted look on his lugubrious face. “And for the record, I didn’t send for the D.C. I told you, he was on my ass from the second he showed up, frothing at the mouth about my poaching on his jurisdiction.”
Lindros barely h
eard him. The ambulance, its light flashing, its siren screaming, was taking off, ferrying the truck driver he had inadvertently shot to George Washington University Hospital. It had taken them nearly forty-five minutes to secure the area, mark it off as a crime scene and extricate him from the cab. Would he live or die? Lindros didn’t want to think about that now. It would be easy to say that his injury was Bourne’s fault—he knew the Old Man would see it that way. But the DCI had a crust formed of two parts pragmatism and one part bitterness that Lindros knew he could never match, and thank God for that. Whatever the trucker’s fate now, he knew he was responsible, and this knowledge served as the perfect fuel for his antagonism. He may not have had the DCI’s cynical crust, but he was not in the market of beating himself up for actions long past remedy. Instead, he spewed the poisonous feeling outward.
“Forty-five minutes!” Harris grunted as an ambulance cut its way through the backed-up traffic. “Christ, that poor bastard could’ve died ten times over!”
“Civil servants!”
“You’re a civil servant, Harry, if memory serves,” Lindros said nastily.
“And you aren’t?”
The venom rose up in Lindros. “Listen, you over-the-hill fuck, I am made of different cloth than the rest of you. My training—”
“All your training didn’t help you to catch Bourne, Lindros! You had two chances and you blew them both!”
“And what did you do to help?”
Khan watched Lindros and Harris going at it. In his DOT overalls, he looked like everyone else on the scene. No one questioned his comings or goings. He had been passing close by the rear of the semi, ostensibly examining the damage done by the car that had rammed into it when he had noticed in the shadows the iron ladder that rose along the side of the tunnel. He looked up, craning his neck. He wondered where it led. Had Bourne wondered the same thing, or had he already known? Now, glancing around to make sure no one was looking in his direction, he quickly climbed the ladder, out of the range of the police spotlights, where no one could see him. He found the hatch and was not surprised to discover the slide bolt newly opened. He pushed the hatch open, went up.
From the vantage point of Washington Circle, he turned slowly in a clockwise direction, scanning all things near and far. A gathering wind whipped about his face. The sky had darkened further, looking bruised by the hammerblows of thunder, muffled by distance, that rolled now and again through the canyons and wide European-style avenues of the city. To the west was Rock Creek Parkway, Whitehurst Freeway and Georgetown. To the north rose the modern towers of Hotel Row—the ANA, Grand, Park Hyatt, and Marriott, and Rock Creek beyond. To the west was K Street, running past McPherson Square and Franklin Park. To the south was Foggy Bottom, sprawling George Washington University, the massive monolith of the State Department. Farther out, where the Potomac River bent to the east, widening out to form the placid bywaters of the Tidal Basin, he saw a silver mote, a plane hanging almost motionless, shining like a mirror, caught high up above the thickening clouds by a last bolt of sunlight before it began its descent into Washington National Airport.
Khan’s nostrils dilated as if he had caught a scent of his quarry. The airport was where Bourne was going. He was certain of it because, had he been in Bourne’s shoes, that was where he would be right now.
The terrible portent of David Webb and Jason Bourne being one and the same man had been marinating in his mind ever since he had heard Lindros and his CIA brethren discussing it. The very idea that he and Bourne were in the same profession felt like an outrage to him, a violation of everything he had painstakingly built for himself. It had been he—and only he—who had drawn himself out of the mire of the jungles. That he had survived those hateful early years was a miracle in itself. But at least those early days had been his and his alone. Now to find himself sharing the stage he had committed himself to conquering with, of all people, David Webb seemed like a cruel jest as well as an intolerable injustice. It was a wrong that must be rectified, the sooner the better. Now he could not wait to confront Bourne, to tell him the truth, to see in his eyes how that revelation would destroy him from the inside out as Khan bled him of life.
Chapter Ten
Bourne stood in the glass and chrome shadows of the International Departures building. Washington National Airport was a madhouse, thronged with businessmen with laptops and carry-ons, families with multiple suitcases; children with Mickey Mouse, Power Ranger and Teddy bear backpacks; the elderly in wheelchairs; a group of proselytizing Mormons on their way to the Third World; lovers hand in hand, tickets to paradise. But despite the crowds, there was an emptiness about airports. As a result, Bourne saw nothing but empty stares, the inward look that was the human being’s instinctual defense against fearful boredom.
It was an irony not lost on him that in airports, where waiting was an institution, time seemed to stand still. Not for him. Now, every minute counted, bringing him closer to termination by the very people he used to work for.
In the fifteen minutes he had been here he had seen a dozen suspicious plainclothesmen. Some were prowling the departure lounges, smoking, drinking from big paper cups, as if they could blend in with the civilians. But most were at or near the airline check-in counters, eyeballing the passengers as they queued up to have their bags checked and receive their boarding passes. Bourne saw almost immediately that it was going to be impossible for him to get on a commercial flight. What other choices were there for him? He had to get to Budapest as quickly as possible.
He was wearing tan slacks, a cheap rain shell over a black turtleneck pullover, a pair of Sperry Top-Sider shoes in lieu of the sneakers, which he had dropped in the trash bin, along with a bundle of the other clothes he had on when he walked out of Wal-Mart. Since he had been spotted there, it was vital that he change his profile as quickly as possible. But now that he had assessed the situation at the terminal, he was not at all happy with what he had chosen.
Avoiding the roaming agents, he went outside into a night fizzing with a fine rain, picked up a shuttle bus that would take him to the Cargo Air Terminal. He sat right behind the driver, striking up a conversation with him. His name was Ralph. Bourne had introduced himself as Joe. They shook hands briefly as the shuttle braked at a pedestrian crosswalk.
“Hey, I’m supposed to meet my cousin at OnTime Cargo,” Bourne said, “but stupid me, I lost the directions he gave me.”
“What’s he do?” Ralph said, pulling ahead into the fast lane.
“He’s a pilot.” Bourne shifted closer. “He was desperate to fly with American or Delta, but you know how it goes.”
Ralph nodded his head in sympathy. “The rich get richer and the poor get shafted.” He had a button nose, a mop of unruly hair and dark circles under his eyes. “Tell me about it.”
“Anyway, can you direct me?”
“I’ll do better than that,” Ralph said with a glance at Bourne in his long mirror. “My shift’s over when I get to the cargo terminal. I’ll take you there myself.”
Khan stood in the rain, the crystal lights of the airport all around him, and thought matters through. Bourne would have smelled the Agency suits even before he spotted them. Khan had counted more than fifty, which meant perhaps three times that many sniffing their way throughout other sections of the airport. Bourne would know that he could never get through them onto an overseas flight no matter how he changed his clothing. They had made him at the Wal-Mart, they knew what he looked like now, he’d heard as much in the underpass.
He could feel Bourne close by. Having sat next to him on the park bench, having sensed the weight of him, the spread of his bones, the stretch of his muscles, the play of light over the features of his face. He knew he was here. It was Bourne’s face that he had clandestinely studied in their brief moments together. He had been keenly aware of needing to memorize every contour, how each expression changed those contours. What had Khan been searching for in Bourne’s expression when he had noted the other’s intens
e interest? Confirmation? Validation? Even he did not know. He only knew that the image of Bourne’s face had become part of his consciousness. For better or for worse, Bourne had a hold on him. They were bound together on the wheel of their own desires until the onset of death.
Khan looked around him once more. Bourne needed to get out of the city and possibly country. But the Agency would be adding on personnel, expanding its search even as it sought to tighten its noose. If it was Khan, he’d want to get out of the country as quickly as possible, so he headed toward the International Arrivals building. Inside he stood in front of a huge color-coded map of the airport, traced out the most efficient route to the cargo terminal. With the commercial flights already under such tight security, if Bourne was going to leave from this airport, his best chance would be aboard a cargo plane. Time was a critical factor now for Bourne. It wouldn’t be long before the Agency realized that Bourne wasn’t going to try to board a regular flight and began to monitor the cargo shippers.
Khan went back out into the rain. Once he determined which flights were departing in the next hour or so, all that remained would be to keep an eye out for Bourne and, should he have guessed correctly, deal with him. He had no more illusions about the difficulty of his task. Much to his shock and chagrin, Bourne had proved to be a clever, determined and resourceful antagonist. He had hurt Khan, had trapped him, slipped away from his grasp more than once. Khan knew that if he was to succeed this time, he would need a way to surprise Bourne, knowing that Bourne would be on the lookout for him. In his mind, the jungle called to him, repeating its message of death and destruction. The end of his long journey was in sight. He would outwit Jason Bourne this one last time.
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