Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy

by Robert Ludlum

  As she entered the flow of pedestrian traffic, she glanced at her watch. It was just after ten. She had coffee and a sweet roll at a corner cafe, then proceeded on to an ATM about two-thirds of the way to the shopping district toward which she was headed. She slipped in her debit card, withdrew the maximum amount, put the wad of bills in her purse and, with Bourne's list in hand, set out to shop.

  Across town, Kevin McColl strode into the branch of the Budapest Bank that handled Annaka Vadas' account. He flashed his credentials and, in due course, was admitted to the glass-enclosed office of the branch manager, a well-dressed man in a conservatively cut suit. They shook hands as they introduced themselves and the manager indicated that McColl sit in the upholstered chair facing him.

  The manager steepled his fingers and said, "How can I be of assistance, Mr. McColl?"

  "We're looking for an international fugitive," McColl began.

  "Ah, and why isn't Interpol involved?"

  "They are," McColl said, "as well as the Quai d'Orsay in Paris, which was this fugitive's last stop before coming here to Budapest."

  "And the name of this wanted man?"

  McColl produced the CIA flyer, which he unfolded and set on the desk in front of the manager.

  The bank manager adjusted his glasses as he scanned the flyer. "Ah, yes, Jason Bourne. I watch CNN." He glanced up over the gold rim of his glasses. "You say he's here in Budapest."

  "We've got a confirmed sighting."

  The bank manager set the flyer aside. "And how may I help?"

  "He was in the company of one of your depositors. Annaka Vadas."

  "Really?" The bank manager frowned. "Her father was killed—shot dead two days ago. Do you think the fugitive murdered him?"

  "It's entirely possible." McColl held tight rein on his impatience. "I would appreciate your help in finding out if Ms. Vadas has used an ATM anytime in the last twenty-four hours."

  "I understand." The bank manager nodded sagely. "The fugitive needs money. He might force her to get it for him."

  "Precisely." Anything, McColl thought, to get this guy to move off the dime. The bank manager swiveled around, began to type on his computer keyboard. "Let's see then. Ah, yes, here she is. Annaka Vadas." He shook his head. "Such a tragedy. And now to be subjected to this."

  He was staring at his computer screen when a chirp sounded. "It seems you were right, Mr. McColl. Annaka Vadas' PIN number was used at an ATM less than a half hour ago."

  "Address," McColl said, leaning forward.

  The manager wrote the address down on a sheet of notepaper, handed it to McColl, who was up and on his way with a "Thank you" thrown over his shoulder.

  Bourne, down in the lobby of the hotel, asked the clerk for directions to the nearest public Internet access point. He walked the twelve blocks to AMI Internet Cafe at 40

  Vaci utca. Inside, it was smoky and crowded, people sit-, ting at computer stations, smoking as they read e-mail, did research or simply surfed the Web. He ordered a double-espresso and a buttered roll from a spike-haired young woman, who handed him a time-stamped slip of paper with the number of his station on it and directed him to a free computer that was already logged onto the Internet.

  He sat down and began his work. In the "Search" field, he typed in the name of Peter Sido, Dr. Schiffer's former partner, but found nothing. That, in itself, was both odd and suspicious. If Sido was a scientist of any note at all—which Bourne had to assume he was if he'd worked with Felix Schiffer—then chances were he'd be somewhere on the Web. The fact that he wasn't caused Bourne to consider the fact that his "absence" was deliberate. He'd have to try another path.

  There was something about the name Sido that rang a bell in his linguist's brain. Was it Russian in origin? Slavic? He searched these language sites but came up blank. On a hunch he switched to a site on the Magyar language, and there it was. It turned out that Hungarian family names—what Hungarians called bynames—most always meant something. For instance, they could be patronymic, meaning they used the father's name, or they could be locative, identifying where the person came from. Their family name could also tell you their profession—interestingly, he noted that Vadas meant hunter. Or what they were. Sido was the Hungarian word for Jew. So Peter Sido was a Hungarian, just like Vadas. Conklin had chosen Vadas to work with. Coincidence? Bourne didn't believe in coincidences. There was a connection; he could sense it. Which opened up the following line of thought: All the world-class hospitals and research facilities in Hungary were in Budapest. Could Sido be here?

  Bourne's hands flew over the keyboard, accessing the on-line Budapest phone directory. And there he found a Dr. Peter Sido. He noted the address and phone number, then logged off, paid for his time on-line and took his double espresso and roll to the cafe section, where he sat at a corner table away from other patrons. He chomped on his roll while he took out his cell phone and dialed Side's number. He sipped his double espresso. After several rings, a female voice answered.

  "Hello," Bourne said in a cheerful voice, "Mrs. Sido?"

  "Yes?"

  He hung up without responding, wolfed down the rest of his breakfast while waiting for the taxi he'd called for. One eye on the front door, he scrutinized everyone who walked in, on the lookout for McColl or any other Agency operative who might have been sent into the field. Certain that he was unobserved, he went out into the street to meet the taxi. He gave the driver Dr. Peter Sido's address and not more than twenty minutes later, the taxi drew up in front of a small house with a stone facade, a tiny garden in front, and miniature iron balconies projecting from each story. He climbed the steps and knocked. The front door was opened by a rather rotund woman of middle years with soft brown eyes and a ready smile. She had brown hair, pulled back in a bun, and was stylishly dressed.

  "Mrs. Sido? Dr. Peter Sido's wife?"

  "That's right." She gazed at him inquiringly. "May I help you?"

  "My name is David Schiffer."

  "Yes?"

  He smiled winningly. "Felix Schiffer's cousin, Mrs. Sido."

  "I'm sorry," Peter Sido's wife said, "but Felix never mentioned you." Bourne was prepared for this. He chuckled. "That's not surprising. You see, we lost touch with each other. I'm only now just returned from Australia."

  "Australia! My word!" She stepped aside. "Well, do come in, please. You must think me rude."

  "Not at all," Bourne said. "Simply surprised, as anyone would be." She showed him into a small sitting room, comfortably, if darkly, furnished and bade him make himself at home. The air smelled of yeast and sugar. When he was seated in an over-upholstered chair, she said, "Would you like coffee or tea? I have some stollen. I baked it this morning."

  "Stollen, a favorite of mine," he said. "And only coffee will do with stollen. Thank you."

  She chuckled and headed for the kitchen. "Are you sure you're not part Hungarian, Mr. Schiffer?"

  "Please call me David," he said, rising and following her. Not knowing the family background, he was on shaky ground when it came to the Schif-fers. "Is there something I can help you with?"

  "Why, thank you, David. And you must call me Eszti." She pointed at a covered cake platter. "Why don't you cut us each a piece?"

  On the refrigerator door, he saw among several family snapshots, one of a young woman, very pretty, alone. Her hand was pressed to the top of her Scottish tarn and her long dark hair was windblown. Behind her was the Tower of London.

  "Your daughter?" Bourne said.

  Eszti Sido glanced up and smiled. "Yes, Roza, my youngest. She's at school in London. Cambridge," she said with understandable pride. "My other daughters—there they are with their families—are both happily married, thank God. Roza's the ambitious one." She smiled shyly. "Shall I tell you a secret, David? I love all my children, but Roza is my favorite—Peter's too. I think he sees something of himself in her. She loves the sciences." Several more minutes of bustling around the kitchen brought a carafe of coffee and plates of stollen on a tray, which Bou
rne carried back into the sitting room.

  "So you're Felix's cousin," she said when they were both settled, he on the chair, she on the sofa. Between them was a low table on which Bourne had placed the tray.

  "Yes, and I'm eager for news of Felix," Bourne said as she poured the coffee. "But, you see, I can't find him, and I thought... well, I was hoping your husband could help me out."

  "I don't think he knows where Felix is." Eszti Sido handed him the coffee and a plate of stollen. "I don't mean to alarm you, David, but he's been quite upset lately. Though they hadn't officially worked together for some time, they'd had a long-distance correspondence going recently." She stirred cream into her coffee. "They never stopped being good friends, you see." "So this recent correspondence was of a personal nature," Bourne said. "I don't know about that." Eszti frowned. "I gathered that it had something to do with their work."

  "You wouldn't know what, would you, Eszti? I've come a long way to find my cousin, and, frankly, I've begun to worry a little. Anything you or your husband could tell me, anything at all would be of great help."

  "Of course, David, I understand completely." She took a dainty bite of her stollen. "I imagine Peter would be quite happy to see you. At the moment, though, he's at work."

  "D'you think I could have his phone number?"

  "Oh, that won't do you any good. Peter never answers his phone at work. You'll have to go to the Eurocenter Bio-I Clinic at 75 Hattyu utca. When you do, you'll first go through a metal detector, after which you'll be stopped at the front desk. Because of the work they do there, they're exceptionally security conscious. They require special ID tags to get into his section, white for visitors, green for resident doctors, blue for assistants and support staff."

  "Thank you for the information, Eszti. May I inquire as to what your husband specializes in?"

  "You mean Felix never told you?"

  Bourne, sipping his delicious coffee, swallowed. "As I'm sure you know, Felix is a secretive person, he never spoke to me about his work."

  "Quite so." Eszti Sido laughed. "Peter's just the same and, considering the frightening field he's in, it's just as well. I'm sure if I knew what he was into, I'd have nightmares. You see, he's an epidemiologist."

  Bourne's heart skipped a beat. "Frightening, you say. He must work with some nasty bugs then. Anthrax, pneumonic plague, Argentinian hemor-rhagic fever ..." Eszti Side's face clouded over. "Oh dear, oh dear, please!" She waved a pudgy-fingered hand. "Those are just the things I know Peter works with but don't want to know about."

  "I apologize." Bourne leaned forward, poured her more coffee, for which she thanked him in relief.

  She sat back, sipping her coffee, her eyes turned inward. "You know, David, now that I think about it, there was an evening not long ago when Peter came home in a high state of excitement. So much so, in fact, that for once he forgot himself and mentioned something to me. I was cooking dinner and he was unusually late and I was having to juggle six things at once—a roast, you know, doesn't like to be overcooked, so I'd taken it out, then put it back when Peter finally walked through the door. I wasn't happy with him that night, I can tell you." She sipped again. "Now, where was I?"

  "Dr. Sido came home very excited," Bourne prompted.

  "Ah, yes, just so." She took up a tiny piece of the stollen between her fingers. "He'd been in contact with Felix, he said, who'd had some sort of breakthrough with the—

  thing—he'd been working on for more than two years." Bourne's mouth was dry. It seemed odd to him that the fate of the world now lay with a housewife with whom he was cozily sharing coffee and homemade pastry. "Did your husband tell you what it was?"

  "Of course he did!" Eszti Sido said with gusto. "That was the reason he was so exercised. It was a biochemical disperser—whatever that is. According to Peter, what was so extraordinary about it was that it was portable. It could be carried in an acoustic guitar case, he said." Her kind eyes gazed at him. "Isn't that an interesting image to use for a scientific mingy?"

  "Interesting, indeed," Bourne said, his mind furiously clicking into place pieces of the jigsaw puzzle the pursuit of which had more than once almost gotten him killed. He rose. "Eszti, I'm afraid I must be going. Thank you so much for your time and your hospitality. Everything was delicious— especially the stollen." She blushed, smiling warmly as she saw him to the door. "Do come again, David, under happier circumstances."

  "I will," he assured her.

  Out on the street, he paused. Eszti Sido's information confirmed both his suspicions and his worst fears. The reason everyone wanted to get their hands on Dr. Schiffer was that he had indeed created a portable means of dispersing chemical and biological pathogens. In a big city such as New York or Moscow, that would mean thousands of deaths with no means to save anyone within the radius of the dispersion. A truly terrifying scenario, one that would come true unless he could find Dr. Schiffer. If anyone knew, it would be Peter Sido. The mere fact that he'd become agitated of late confirmed that theory.

  There was no doubt that he needed to see Dr. Peter Sido, the sooner the better.

  "You realize you're just asking for trouble," Feyd al-Saoud said.

  "I know that," Jamie Hull replied. "But Boris forced it on me. You know he's a sonuvabitch as well as I do."

  "First of all," Feyd al-Saoud said evenly, "if you insist on calling him Boris, there can be no further discussion. You're doomed to a blood feud." He spread his hands. "Perhaps it's my failing, Mr. Hull, so I would ask you to explain to me why you'd want to further complicate an assignment that's already taxing all our security skills." The two agents were inspecting the Oskjuhlid Hotel's HVAC system in which they'd installed both heat-sensitive infrared and motion detectors. This foray was quite apart from the daily inspection of the summit's forum HVAC the three agents undertook as a team.

  In a little over eight hours the first contingent of the negotiating parties would arrive. Twelve hours after that, the leaders would present themselves and the summit would begin. There was absolutely no margin for error for any of them, including Boris Illyich Karpov.

  "You mean you don't think he's a sonuvabitch?" Hull said. Feyd al-Saoud checked a branching against the schematic he seemed to carry with him at all times. "Frankly, I've had other things on my mind." Satisfied that the junction was secure, Feyd al-Saoud moved on.

  "Okay, let's cut to the chase."

  Feyd al-Saoud turned to him. "I beg your pardon?"

  "What I was thinking was that you and I make a good team. We get along well. When it conies to security, we're on the same page."

  "What you mean is, I follow your orders well."

  Hull looked hurt. "Did I say that?"

  "Mr. Hull, you didn't have to. You, like most Americans, are quite transparent. If you're not in complete control, you tend to either get angry or sulk." Hull felt himself flooding with resentment. "We're not children!" he cried.

  "On the contrary," Feyd al-Saoud said equably, "there are times when you remind me of my six-year-old son."

  Hull wanted to pull his Clock 31 .357 mm and shove its muzzle in the Arab's face. Where did he get off talking to a representative of the U.S. Government like that? It was like spitting on the flag, for Christ's sake! But what good would a show offeree do him now? No, much as he hated to admit it, he needed to go another way.

  "So what d'you say?" he said as equably as he could.

  Feyd al-Saoud appeared unmoved. "In all honesty, I'd prefer to see you and Mr. Karpov work out your differences together."

  Hull shook his head. "Ain't gonna happen, my friend, you know that as well as I do." Unfortunately, Feyd al-Saoud did know that. Both Hull and Karpov were entrenched in their mutual enmity. The best that could be hoped for now was that they'd confine hostilities to taking the occasional potshot at each other without an escalation into all-out war.

  "I think I could best serve you both by maintaining a neutral position," he said now. "If I don't, who's going to keep the two of you from rend
ing each other limb from limb?"

  After purchasing everything Bourne needed, Annaka left the men's clothes shop. As she headed toward the theatrical district, she saw the reflection of movement behind her in the shop window. She didn't hesitate or even break stride but slowed her pace enough so that as she strolled she confirmed that she was being followed. As casually as she could, she crossed the street, paused in front of a shop window. In it she recognized the image of Kevin McColl as he crossed the street behind her, ostensibly heading toward a cafe on the corner of the block. She knew that she had to lose him before she reached the area of theatrical makeup shops.

  Making sure he couldn't see, she pulled out her cell phone, dialed Bourne's number.

  "Jason," she said softly, "McColTs picked me up."

  "Where are you now?" he said.

  "The beginning of Vaci utca."

  "I'm not far away."

  "I thought you weren't going to leave the hotel. What've you been doing?"

  "I've discovered a lead," he said.

  "Really?" Her heart beat fast. Had he found out about Stepan? "What is it?"

  "First, we've got to deal with McColl. I want you to go to 75 Hattyu utca. Wait for me at the front desk." He continued, giving her details of what she was to do. She listened intently, then said, "Jason, are you sure you're up to this?" "Just do what I tell you," he said sternly, "and everything will be fine." She disconnected and called a taxi. When it came, she got in and gave the driver the address Bourne had made her repeat back to him. As they drove off, she looked around but didn't see McColl, though she was certain he'd been following her. A moment later a battered dark-green Opel threaded its way through traffic, wedging itself behind her taxi. Annaka, peering into the driver's off-side mirror, recognized the hulking figure behind the wheel of the Opel, and her lips curled in a secret smile. Kevin McColl had taken the bait; now if only Bourne's plan would work.