Inside the refrigerated truck hastening away from the motel, Bourne, wrapped in the bedding, lay amid wooden cases containing plastic baskets of strawberries stacked up almost to the ceiling. He had managed to get himself into a position above floor level, the crates on either side holding him in place. When he had entered the rear of the truck, he had locked the door behind him. All such refrigeration trucks had a safety mechanism that could open and lock the rear door from the inside to ensure no one inadvertently got trapped. Switching on his flashlight for a moment, he had made out the center aisle, wide enough for a man to pass through. On the upper right-hand wall was the exhaust grille for the refrigeration compressor.
All at once, he tensed. The truck was slowing now as it approached the roadblock, then it stopped completely. The flashpoint of extreme danger had arrived. There was utter silence for perhaps five minutes, then, abruptly, the harsh sound of the rear door being opened. Voices came to him. "You pick up any hitchhikers?" a cop said.
"Uh-uh," Guy, the truck driver, answered.
"Here, look at this photo. Seen this fella on the side of the road maybe?" "No, sir. Never seen the man. What'd he do?" "What you got in there?" Another cop's voice.
"Fresh strawberries," Guy said. "Listen, Officers, have a heart. It ain't good for them to have the door open like this. What rots comes outta my pay." Someone grunted. A powerful flashlight beam played along the center aisle, swept across the floor just beneath the spot where Bourne lay suspended amid the strawberries.
"Okay," the first cop said, "close it up, buddy." The flashlight beam snapped off and the door slammed shut. Bourne waited until the truck was in gear, rolling at speed down the highway to D.C., before extricating himself. His mind was buzzing. The cops must have shown Guy the same photo of David Webb that was being broadcast on CNN. Within a half hour, the smooth highway driving had given way to the constant stop and start of urban streets with traffic lights. It was time to exit. Bourne went to the door, pushed on the safety lever. It wouldn't move. He tried again, this time with more force. Cursing under his breath, he snapped on the flashlight he'd taken from Conklin's house. In the bright circle of the beam, he saw that the mechanism had jammed. He was locked in.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Director of Central Intelligence was in a dawn conference with Roberta AlonzoOrtiz, the National Security Advisor. They met in the president's Situation Room, a circular space in the bowels of the White House. Many floors above them were the woodpaneled, beautifully dentiled rooms most people associated with this storied, historical building, but down here the full muscle and might of the Pentagon oligarchs held sway. Like the great temples of the ancient civilizations, the Sit Room had been built to last for centuries. Carved out of the old subbasement, its proportions were intimidating, as befitted such a monument to invincibility.
Alonzo-Ortiz, the DCI and their respective staffs—as well as select members of the Secret Service—were going over, for the hundredth time, the security plans for the terrorism summit in Reykjavik. Detailed schematics for the Oskjuhlid Hotel were up on a projection screen, along with notes on security issues regarding entrances, exits, elevators, roof, windows and the like. A direct video hook-up to the hotel had been established, so that Jamie Hull, the DCI's emissary-in-place, could participate in the briefing.
"No margin for error will be tolerated," Alonzo-Ortiz said. She was a formidablelooking woman with jet-black hair and bright, keen eyes. "Every aspect of this summit must go off like clockwork," she continued. "Any breach of security no matter how minuscule will have disastrous effects. It would destroy what coin the president has spent eighteen months building up with the principal Islamic states. I don't have to tell any of you that beneath the facade of cooperation lurks an innate distrust of Western values, the Judeo-Christian ethic and all that stands for. Any hint that the president has deceived them will have the most dire and immediate consequences." She looked slowly around the table. It was one of her special gifts that when addressing a group she made each and every member believe that she was speaking only to him. "Make no mistake, gentlemen. We are talking about nothing less than a global war here, a massed jihad such as we have never before seen and, quite possibly, cannot imagine."
She was about to turn the briefing over to Jamie Hull when a young, slim man entered the room, went silently over to the DCI, handed him a sealed envelope.
"My apologies, Dr. Alonzo-Ortiz," he said as he slit open the envelope. He read the contents impassively, though his heart rate had doubled. The National Security Advisor did not like her briefings interrupted. Aware that she was glaring at him, he pushed back his chair and rose.
Alonzo-Ortiz directed at him a smile so compressed her lips fairly disappeared. "I trust you have sufficient cause to leave us so abruptly."
"I do, indeed, Dr. Alonzo-Ortiz." The DCI, though an old hand and, therefore, a wielder of his own power, knew better than to butt heads with the one person the president relied on most. He remained on his best behavior even though he deeply resented Roberta Alonzo-Ortiz both because she had usurped his traditional role with the president and because she was a woman. For these reasons, he employed what little power was at his command—the withholding of what she wanted most to know: the nature of the emergency dire enough to take him away.
The National Security Advisor's smile tightened further. "In that event, I would appreciate a full briefing of the crisis, whatever it may be, as soon as is practicable."
"Absolutely," the DCI said, beating a hasty retreat. As the thick door to the Sit Room swung shut behind him, he added, dryly, "Your Highness," eliciting a gust of laughter from the field agent his office had employed as a messenger.
It took the DCI less than fifteen minutes to return to HQ where a meeting of Agency directorate heads was awaiting his arrival. The subject: the murders of Alexander Conklin and Dr. Morris Panov. The prime suspect: Jason Bourne. These were whey-faced men in impeccably tailored conservative suits, rep ties, polished brogues. Not for them striped shirts, colored collars, the passing fads of fashion. Used to striding the corridors of power inside the Beltway, they were as immutable as their clothes. They were conservative thinkers from conservative colleges, scions from the correct families who, early on, had been directed by their fathers to the offices, and thence the confidences, of the right people—leaders with vision and energy who knew how to get the job done. The nexus in which they now sat was a tightly held secret world, but the tentacles that fanned out from it stretched far and wide.
As soon as the DCI entered the conference room, the lights were dimmed. On a screen appeared the forensic photos of the bodies in situ.
"For the love of God, take those down!" the DCI shouted. "They're an obscenity. We shouldn't be viewing these men like that."
Martin Lindros, the DDCI, pressed a button and the screen went blank. "To bring everyone up to date, yesterday we confirmed that it was David Webb's car in Conklin's driveway." He paused as the Old Man cleared his throat.
"Let's call a spade a spade." The DCI leaned forward, fists upon the gleaming table.
"The world at large may know this . .. this man as David Webb but here he is known as Jason Bourne. We will use that name."
"Yessir," Lindros said, determined not to run afoul of the DCI's exceedingly black mood. He barely needed to consult his notes, so fresh and vivid in his mind were the findings. "W—Bourne was last seen on the Georgetown campus approximately an hour before the murders. A witness observed him hurrying toward his car. We can assume he drove directly to Alex Conklin's house. Bourne was definitely in the house at or around the time of the murders. His fingerprints are on a glass of half-finished Scotch found in the media room."
"What about the gun?" the DCI asked. "Is it the murder weapon?" Lindros nodded.
"Absolutely confirmed by ballistics." "And it's Bourne's, you're certain, Martin?" Lindros consulted a photocopied sheet, spun it across the table to the DCI.
"Registration confirms that the mur
der weapon belongs to David Webb. Our David Webb."
"Sonuvabitch!" The DCI's hands were trembling. "Are the bastard's fingerprints on it?"
"The gun was wiped clean," Lindros said, consulting another sheet. "No fingerprints at all."
"The mark of a professional." The DCI looked abruptly weary. It wasn't easy to lose an old friend.
"Yessir. Absolutely."
"And Bourne?" the DCI growled. It appeared painful for him even to utter the name.
"Early this morning we received a tip that Bourne was holed up in a Virginia motel near one of the roadblocks," Lindros said. "The area was immediately cordoned off, an assault team sent into the motel. If Bourne was in fact there, he'd already fled, slipped through the cordon. He's vanished into thin air."
"Goddammit!" Color had risen to the DCI's cheeks.
Lindros' assistant came silently in, handed him a sheet of paper. He scanned it for a moment, then looked up. "Earlier, I sent a team to Webb's home, in the event he turned up there or contacted his wife. The team found the house locked up and empty. There's no sign of Bourne's wife or two children. Subsequent investigation revealed that she appeared at their school and pulled them out of class with no explanation."
"That seals it!" The DCI seemed almost apoplectic. "In every area he's a step ahead of us because he had these murders planned out beforehand!" During the short, swift drive to Langley, he'd allowed his emotions to get the better of him. Between Alex's murder and Alonzo-Ortiz's maneuvering, he had entered the Agency briefing in a rage. Now, presented with the forensic evidence, he was more than ready to convict.
"It's clear that Jason Bourne has gone rogue." The Old Man, still standing, fairly shook now. "Alexander Conklin was an old and trusted friend. I cannot remember or list the number of times he put his reputation—his very life—on the line for this organization, for his country. He was a true patriot in every sense of the word, a man of whom we were all justly proud." Lindros, for his own part, was considering the number of times he could remember and list when the Old Man had ranted at Conklin's cowboy tactics, his rogue missions, his secret agendas. It was all well and good to eulogize the dead, but, he thought, in this business it was downright foolish to ignore the dangerous tendencies of agents past and present. That, of course, included Jason Bourne. He was a sort of sleeper agent, the worst kind really—one not fully under his own control. In the past, he had been activated by circumstance, not by his own choosing. Lindros knew very little about Jason Bourne, an oversight he was determined to rectify the moment this briefing was adjourned.
"If Alexander Conklin had one weakness, one blind spot, it was Jason Bourne," the DCI went on. "Years before he met and married his current wife, Marie, he lost the whole of his first family—his Thai wife and two kids—in an attack in Phnom Penh. The man was half-mad with grief and remorse when Alex picked him up off the street in Saigon and trained him. Years later, even after Alex enlisted the aid of Morris Panov, there were problems controlling the asset—despite Dr. Panov's regular reports to the contrary. Somehow, he too fell under the influence of Jason Bourne.
"I warned Alex over and over, I begged him to bring Bourne in to be evaluated by our team of forensic psychiatrists, but he refused. Alex, God rest his soul, could be a stubborn man; he believed in Bourne."
The DCFs face was slick with sweat, his eyes wide as he glanced around the room.
"And what is the result of that belief? Both men have been gunned down like dogs by the very asset they sought to control. The simple truth is that Bourne is uncontrollable. And he is deadly, a poisonous viper." The DCI slammed his fist down on the conference table.
"I will not have these heinous, cold-blooded murders go unpunished. I'm authorizing a worldwide sanction drawn up, ordering Jason Bourne's immediate termination."
Bourne shivered, by now chilled through and through. He glanced up, played his beam over the refrigeration vent. Heading back down the center aisle, he clambered up the right-hand stack of crates, crawled his way across the top of the stacks until he came to the grate. Flipping open the switchblade, he used the spine of the blade to unscrew the grille. The soft light of dawn flowed into the interior. There appeared to be just enough room for him to squeeze through. He hoped.
He rolled his shoulders in toward his chest, squeezing himself into the aperture, and began to wriggle from side to side. All went well for the first several inches or so, and then his forward progress abruptly stopped. He tried to move but couldn't. He was stuck. He exhaled all the air out of his lungs, allowed his upper body to go slack. He pushed with his feet and legs. A crate slid and tumbled, but he had inched forward. He lowered his legs until his feet found purchase on the crates below. Locking the heels of his shoes against the upper bar, he pushed again and again he moved. By slowly and carefully repeating this maneuver he was at last able to get his head and shoulders through. He bunked up into the candy pink sky, where fluffy clouds rose up, shifting shapes as he rolled by beneath them. Reaching up, he grabbed the corner of the roof, levered himself all the way out of the semi and onto its roof.
At the next stoplight he jumped down, tucking his lead shoulder in, rolling to cushion his fall. He rose, gained the sidewalk, dusted himself off. The street was deserted. He offered the unsuspecting Guy a brief salute as the semi drove off in a blue haze of diesel fumes.
He was on the outskirts of D.C., in the poor northeast district. Light was coming into the sky, the long shadows of dawn retreating before the sun. The hum of traffic could be heard in the distance, as well as the wail of a police siren. He breathed deeply. Beneath the urban stink, there was for him something fresh in the air, the exhilaration of freedom after the long night's struggle to remain hidden, to remain free. He walked until he saw the fluttering of faded red, white and blue pennants. The usedcar lot was shut down for the night. He walked onto the deserted lot, chose a car at random and switched its plates with the car next to it. He jimmied the lock, opened the driver's side door and hotwired the ignition. A moment later, he was driving out of the lot and down the street.
He parked in front of a diner whose chrome-plated facade was a relic of the fifties. A gigantic cup of coffee sat atop the roof, its neon lights long ago burned out. Inside, it was steamy. The smell of coffee grounds and hot oil was ingrained into every surface. To his left was a long Formica counter and a row of vinyl-topped chromium stools; to his right, against the bank of sun-streaked windows, were a line of booths, each one with one of those individual jukeboxes that held the cards of all the songs that could be played for a quarter.
Bourne's white skin was silently remarked upon by the dark faces that turned as the door shut behind him with a little tinkle of a bell. No one returned his smile. Some appeared indifferent to him, but others of a different nature seemed to interpret his presence as an evil omen of things to come.
Aware of the hostile glares, he slid into a lumpy booth. A waitress with a frizz of orange hair and a face like Eartha Kitt dropped a fly-blown menu in front of him, filled his cup with steaming coffee. Bright, overly made-up eyes in a care-worn face regarded him for a time with curiosity and something more—compassion, perhaps. "Don't you mind the stares, sugah," she breathed. "They're scared of you." He ate an indifferent breakfast: eggs, bacon and home fries, washed down with the astringent coffee. But he needed the protein and the caffeine laid to rest his exhaustion, at least temporarily.
The waitress refilled his cup and he sipped, marking time until Lincoln Fine Tailors opened. But he was not idle. He dug out the notepad he had picked off the table in Alex's media room, once again looked at the imprint left on the top sheet. NX 20. It had the ring of something experimental, something ominous, but really it could be anything, including a new-model computer.
Glancing up, he observed the denizens of the neighborhood drifting in and out, discussing Welfare checks, drug scores, police beatings, the sudden deaths of family members, the illness of friends in jail. This was their life, more alien to him than life in Asia
or Micronesia. The atmosphere inside the diner was darkened by their rage and sorrow.
Once, a police cruiser slid slowly by like a shark skirting a reef. All motion in the diner ceased, as if this significant moment was a frame in a photographer's lens. He turned his head away and looked at the waitress. She was watching the taillights of the cruiser disappear down the block. An audible sigh of relief swept the diner. Bourne experienced his own sense of relief. It seemed that, after all, he was in the company of fellow travelers in shadow.
His thoughts turned to the man who was stalking him. His face had an Asian cast, and yet not wholly so. Was there something familiar about it— the bold line of the nose, which was not Asian at all, or the shape of the full lips, which was very much so? Was he someone from Bourne's past, from Vietnam? But, no, that was impossible. Judging by his appearance, he was in his late twenties at most, meaning he couldn't have been more than five or six when Bourne had been there. Who was he, then, and what did he want? The questions continued to haunt Bourne. Abruptly, he set down his half-empty cup. The coffee was beginning to burn a hole in his stomach.
Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy Page 8