“Where are you?” Benjamin’s thin, echoey voice slapped her from across the Atlantic.
“In the hotel room, making sure everything is ready for Hendricks.”
“There’s been a change of plan.”
She shot up, her heart pounding in a leap of hope. “What do you mean?”
“Hendricks has been relieved of security at Indigo Ridge.”
“What?” She poured disbelief into her voice. “How could that happen?”
“In the madhouse of American politics, who can say?”
She rose, swung her long legs off the bed, and padded over to the window to stare out at the passing traffic. Her heart lifted and the vise around her lungs released. For the first time in days, she took a deep breath.
“So, where do we go from here?” she said, though she knew perfectly well. “After I close the mission down.”
“The mission is still active.”
Her breath froze in her throat. “I… I don’t understand.” Her heart seemed to be flogging her chest to death.
“Hendricks is on to Fitz; he assigned one of his people, Peter Marks, to look into it.”
Maggie stared out at the street, where young couples window-shopped arm in arm. A mother jogged by while pushing her baby in one of those special strollers. Horns blared, testament to their drivers’ impatience. Maggie wanted desperately to be in one of those cars, to be moving away, to be anywhere but in this room, talking to anyone but Benjamin El-Arian.
She cleared her throat. “Give me two hours. I can get Hendricks to shut the investigation down.”
El-Arian didn’t bother to ask her how she would do it. “Too late,” he said. “Marks found something. We’ve taken care of him, but that still leaves one loose end.”
Maggie pressed her forehead against the window, trying to transfer the coolness of the glass to her burning body. “You don’t expect me to kill him?”
“I expect you to follow orders.” Benjamin’s voice was like a wasp in her ear.
“He’s the secretary of defense, Benjamin.”
“Get creative, but just get it done,” El-Arian said.
There was a long silence during which Maggie could hear the blood rushing in her ears.
“Are you there?”
“Yes,” she said, almost inaudibly.
“You know the only way it can be done.”
“Yes.” Her breath leaving her, as if forever.
“Skara, you knew before you left what this mission could turn into.”
She closed her eyes, trying to will herself to remain calm. Nevertheless, her voice held the slightest tremor when she said, “I did.”
“Well, then, now you know for certain.” El-Arian’s voice, like a wasp, delivered its sting. “You are on a suicide mission.”
Bourne heard the muffled sound and immediately identified it as a shot with a suppressor-enhanced pistol. Peering out of Kaja’s window, he was just in time to see Marlon Etana emerging from his own bedroom window. Etana eeled through a stand of palms, then leapt a low wall. Bourne opened the window and leapt through. He took a line that got him to the wall and over it faster, and he was on Etana within the space of a hundred yards.
They hit the ground together, rolling. Bourne struck first, but Etana managed to tumble away and was up on his feet and running again. Bourne sprinted after him, out of the stand of palms to the verge of the sea road, then across it, dodging speeding Vespas as he headed toward the dockside area.
Ducking into a shipwright’s workshop, Etana snatched up an awl, threw it behind him. Bourne ducked and kept on, vaulting over the hull of a boat whose outside was being re-tarred. He grabbed a four-foot length of wood and threw it like a javelin. It struck Etana on the left shoulder, spinning him around even as he staggered, his arms flailing to keep his balance. He struck a wall, which saved him from losing his feet, and he reeled onward, out the other side of the shack, into the spangled night.
The water, rippled with moonlight, was on their right, the seawall on their left. Etana lurched to the left in an attempt to mount the wall, but Bourne cut him off and he was obliged to head the other way, out to the boat slips.
Etana ran out onto one of the long slips, boats on either side. Bourne was gaining on him. He saw this and leapt onto one of the vessels, vanishing behind the cockpit. Instead of heading directly for him, Bourne sprinted toward the adjacent boat, leaping onto it as Etana appeared holding a Taurus PT145 Millennium. Etana looked around, baffled as to where Bourne had gone.
Headlights swept the docks, illuminating for Bourne the path he needed to take; crouching low, he scuttled to the starboard side of the boat and made the jump onto Etana’s boat. At once Etana appeared, no doubt having felt the slight rocking Bourne’s weight had caused.
The two men stalked each other, using the contours of the boat to shield themselves as they moved about. Etana fired at Bourne as he showed himself briefly. Now that he knew where Etana was, Bourne doubled back, vaulted onto the cockpit, rolled over it, and dropped down on Etana. The Taurus went off again, and then, with Bourne’s second blow, it went skittering across the deck.
Etana drove a fist into Bourne’s cheek and blood spurted out of Bourne’s mouth. He followed that up with a vicious kidney punch that dropped Bourne to the deck, writhing in agony. Etana turned and, snatching up the Taurus, turned back in time to receive a kick that flattened his nose. He staggered backward, blood gushing over his face, but still managed to bring the Taurus into firing position. But before he had a chance to squeeze off a shot, Bourne drove the end of his fingers into the spot just below Etana’s sternum.
All the air went out of Etana, he doubled over, and Bourne grabbed the Taurus out of his hand. He jammed the muzzle of the pistol into the side of Etana’s head.
“Stop!” a voice called from dockside. “That’s enough!”
Bourne turned and saw Don Fernando standing in a spread-legged shooter’s stance, arms straight out in front of him.
“Put the Taurus down, Jason, and step away.” When Bourne hesitated, Don Fernando cocked the hammer of the Magnum .357 Colt Python. “Now or never. It will only take one shot.”
Book Four
25
I’D KILL YOU right here, General Karpov, but killing isn’t allowed in the sacred grounds of the Mosque.” Zachek prodded Boris in the small of his back. “Not that I wouldn’t mind.”
The two men with him grinned, waving their weapons as if they were flags.
Outside, the night had formed a gritty layer, a tense gray band that seemed at any moment ready to snap back into its original shape. They waded through this as if it were the shallows of the ocean.
Zachek bundled Boris into a waiting car. He was squeezed in between Zachek and one of the gunmen.
“How does it feel?” Zachek said. “To be on your own, no direction home?”
The second gunman slid in beside the driver, and they took off, crossing the river, driving deep into Sendling, one of Munich’s two industrial districts. At this time of night, there were few vehicles on the streets and no foot traffic whatsoever. The driver pulled to the curb along Kyreinstrasse and they got out. The driver unlocked a door and they entered what appeared to be an abandoned building. The stench of the past was strong in Boris’s nostrils. The walls were peeling, a chair with a broken leg lay on its side, cartons were falling apart. Everywhere he looked was decay, as if they were inside a huge animal slowly dying.
While the two gunmen looked to their weapons, Zachek led Boris to the rear wall and turned him so his back was facing it. “This is where it will happen,” he said.
“As long as it’s quick,” Boris said.
“We’re all professionals here.” He pulled Boris’s arms behind his back, but instead of tying his wrists, he placed Boris’s Tokarev into his waiting hands. Then he moved back smartly and stood to one side, so that both the gunman and the driver, leaning casually against a crumbling pillar, were in his line of vision. He, too, held his hands behind hi
s back, slipping a Taurus from beneath his jacket where it had lain inside his belt.
He raised his voice. “Any last requests, General? Never mind, there’s no one to pay them any mind.”
The gunmen chuckled as they raised their weapons. Boris brought his right arm around in front of him and squeezed off two shots. As both gunmen fell, bullets through their brains, Zachek shot the driver through the heart.
In the smoking space, amid the deafening silence that comes after gunfire, the two men stood looking at each other. Zachek’s eye was still closed, the flesh around it multihued and puffy. He was the first to lower his weapon. Boris followed suit, walking toward the other man.
“What is it about little pricks,” he said, “that makes them so reliable?”
Zachek grinned.
When Robbinet arrived at the hospital where Aaron had taken Soraya, he discovered that the doctors who had treated her were all off shift and had left for the night. He looked at his watch: It was the hour before dawn. He asked for the best neurologist on staff, was told he was busy, and then produced his credentials. Within five minutes a dapper young man, with longish hair that marked him as something of a maverick, appeared and introduced himself as Dr. Longeur. To his credit, he was already leafing through Soraya’s chart.
“I don’t think she should have checked herself out,” he said with a frown. “There are a number of tests—”
“Come with me, Doctor,” Robbinet said crisply, leading him out of the hospital. He told Longeur that Soraya was missing. “My job is to find this woman, Doctor. Your job is to make sure she is physically sound.”
“It would be best if she returned to the hospital.”
“Under the circumstances, that may not be possible.” Robbinet scanned the dark streets. “I have to assume she will be unwilling to return.”
“Is she phobic?”
“You can ask her that when we find her.”
Together they questioned the area habitués, people who, Robbinet was sure, had been there when Soraya had fled. Robbinet showed them a photo of Soraya.
“These people need help. Some desperately,” Robbinet said.
Dr. Longeur shrugged. “The hospital is already overloaded with patients in worse shape, what would you have us do?”
They went on with their interviews. Finally, they found a disheveled woman who claimed to have seen Soraya and the direction in which she went. She held out a trembling hand and Robbinet gave her some euros. He turned away, disgusted; it was impossible to know whether she was telling the truth.
They sat in his car while the driver waited for instructions. Robbinet called Soraya’s cell phone again and got no answer, but then he wasn’t expecting any. The patrols Aaron had sent out had yet to find her. He didn’t think they would. She was a highly skilled field agent. If she didn’t want to be caught, she wouldn’t be. He sensed that she was following her own lead, that after her friend’s murder she didn’t want to be encumbered by anyone, even the Quai d’Orsay. He didn’t agree with her decision, but he understood it. Still, he feared for her life. She had been near death and had lost someone close to her. It seemed likely that when it came to her own condition she was not thinking clearly.
He gave his driver the address of the Monition Club, but when he arrived the place was lit up like a Christmas tree and there were so many Quai d’Orsay and police personnel around, he knew she hadn’t come back here. Where then?
He glanced at his watch again. The sky to the east was lightening. He reviewed the situation. He knew everything Aaron knew, but it was possible Soraya knew more. She had been certain that the murder trail led back to the Île de France Bank, outside of which her contact had been run down. He tried to put himself in her head. If she had a goal, why go to ground? Maybe because at night she could not gain access to wherever she needed to go. He leaned forward; his gut told him where she was headed. He was taking a gamble, but he did not know what else to do.
“Place de l’Iris,” he told his driver. “La Défense.”
It was where he would go if he were her.
Jason, please step away,” Don Fernando said. “I won’t ask you again.”
“This is a mistake,” Bourne said.
Don Fernando shook his head, but the muzzle of the Magnum never wavered. Bourne took a step back and Don Fernando fired. The bullet struck Etana between the eyes. He was thrown back so hard he flipped over the railing, tumbling into the sea. The water darkened with the spread of his blood.
Bourne glanced over the side of the boat. “Like I said, a mistake.” He looked back at Don Fernando, who was advancing toward him across the dock. “He could have told us a lot.”
Don Fernando stepped onto the boat, the Magnum held at his side. “He would have told us nothing, Jason. You know these people as well as I do. They have no conception of pain. They have suffered all their lives; martyrdom is all they think about. They are only shadows in this life; they are dead men walking.”
“Essai?”
“Etana slit his throat before he leapt out the window.” Don Fernando sat down on the wooden cowling. “Etana came to kill you, Jason, for what you did in Tineghir last year. Essai tried to talk him out of it, but Etana was a stubborn man. So Essai and I hit upon a plan. I’d keep you out of your room while he slipped in and waited.”
“He was waiting for Etana.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a pity Essai is dead.”
Don Fernando passed a hand across his eyes. “There are too many deaths on my plate these days.”
Bourne thought about the shipment lying in the warehouse across the city waiting to be delivered to El-Gabal in Damascus. What was in those twelve crates, who was the real sender—the Domna or the organization Christien Norén had worked for—and was Don Fernando a member of that same group? It seemed the answers lay at Avenue Choukry Kouatly.
He tensed as a police cruiser appeared, heading down the dock as slowly and purposefully as a shark approaches a dead fish.
Don Fernando took out a cigar, bit off the end, and lit it. “Easy,” he said as the cruiser slowed to a halt. “I called them.”
Two uniforms and a detective in a suit piled out. Don Fernando directed them to Etana. While the uniforms went to inspect the corpse floating by the side of the boat, the detective headed straight to Don Fernando, who offered him a cigar.
The detective nodded, bit off the end, and lit up. He made no attempt to inspect the murder scene or glance Bourne’s way.
“The dead man’s a foreign national, you say.” The detective’s voice was deep and phlegmy, as if he was fighting a chest cold.
“In Spain illegally,” Don Fernando said. “A drug dealer.”
“We have very harsh penalties for drug dealers,” the detective said around a cloud of smoke. “As you know.”
Don Fernando inspected the end of his cigar. “I saved the state a lot of money, and you, Diaz, a great deal of time.”
Diaz nodded sagely. “True, Don Fernando, and for this service you have the gratitude of the state.” He let out another cloud of smoke and stared up into the spangled sky. “Let me share my thoughts as I was driven here. Our precinct is a poor one, Don Fernando, and with the debt crisis, budgets are cut and then cut again.”
“A sad state of affairs. Please allow me.” Don Fernando reached into his breast pocket and drew out a folded wad of euros, which he pressed into the detective’s hand. “Leave the body to me.”
Diaz nodded. “As always, Don Fernando.” Then he turned on his heel and shouted to his men, “¡Vámanos, muchachos!” He strode off, the two uniforms in his wake.
When the cruiser had backed up and taken off down the sea road, Don Fernando gestured. “The way of the world never changes, eh, Jason?” He gestured. “Come, now we attend to Marlon Etana.”
“Not you,” Bourne said as he went back to the side of the boat. “I’ll do it.”
Reaching down, he removed a boat hook from the side of the cockpit, snagged th
e collar of Etana’s jacket, and hauled him up until his head, arms, and torso balanced on the gunwale. Don Fernando grabbed Etana’s belt and dragged him the rest of the way into the boat. For a moment he stared down at the corpse, which was spewing seawater out of its open mouth. Then he crouched down beside Etana, his knees creaking.
Bourne watched as Don Fernando’s hands pulled aside Etana’s jacket and went through all his pockets as skillfully as a sneak thief. Don Fernando handed Bourne Etana’s phone, wallet, and keys. Then he rose and hauled the anchor out of its compartment in the bow of the boat. Unhooking the chain from its attaching ring, he wrapped it around Etana’s corpse.
“Let’s get him over the side,” Don Fernando said.
“In a minute.” Crouching down, Bourne pried open Etana’s mouth and tested his teeth. A moment later he held up the false tooth that contained the cyanide capsule. When he rose, he produced the false tooth he had taken off the Russian in the warehouse. Holding one in each hand, he showed them to Don Fernando.
“Where did you get that?” the older man said.
“I went inside the warehouse, where I killed the gunman and his driver,” Bourne said. “The gunman bit into his while I was questioning him. This one is from the driver.” When Don Fernando said nothing, Bourne added, “This hollow tooth is an old NKVD trick to keep its members from talking if they were captured.”
Don Fernando pointed to Etana. “I can’t get him over the side myself.”
“Only if I get answers.”
Don Fernando nodded.
Bourne pocketed the suicide capsules and they hoisted Etana up over the gunwale and into the water. He sank out of sight immediately.
Don Fernando sat on the gunwale, facing Bourne. He seemed very tired, and suddenly old, shrunken in on himself. “Marlon Etana was put in place to inform on the Domna.”
“In other words, he was Christien Norén’s replacement.”
“Precisely.” Don Fernando rubbed his hands down his trousers. “The problem was, Etana went rogue.”
Robert Ludlum’sTM The Bourne Dominion Page 30