Текст книги "The Bourne Sanction (Санкция Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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“Here he is,” she muttered as Bourne came quickly and silently up behind them. He

must have somehow gotten into the Independence Avenue entrance at the south side of

the building, closed to the public, made his way through the galleries to the front.

The DCI turned, impaling Bourne with a penetrating gaze. “So you came after all.”

“I said I would.”

He didn’t blink, didn’t move at all. Soraya thought that he was at his most terrifying

then, the sheer force of his will at its peak.

“You have something for me.”

“I said you could read it.” The DCI held out a small manila envelope.

Bourne took it. “I regret I haven’t the time to do that here.”

He whirled, snaking through the crowd, vanishing inside the Freer.

“Wait!” Hart cried. “Wait!”

But it was too late, and in any event three NSA agents came walking rapidly through

the entrance. Their progress was slowed by the people exiting the gallery, but they

pushed many of them aside. They trotted past the DCI and Soraya as if they didn’t exist.

A third agent appeared, took up position just inside the loggia. He stared at them and

smiled thinly.

Bourne moved as quickly as he thought prudent through the interior. Having

memorized it from the visitors’ brochure and come through it once already, he did not

waste a step. But one thing worried him. He hadn’t seen any agents on his way in. That

meant, more than likely, he’d have to deal with them on the way out.

Near the rear entrance, a guard was checking galleries just before closing time. Bourne

was obliged to detour around a corner with an outcropping of a fire call box and

extinguisher. He could hear the guard’s soft voice as he herded a family toward the exit

in front. Bourne was about to slip out when he heard other voices sharper, clipped.

Moving into shadow, he saw a pair of slim, white-haired Chinese scholars in pin-striped

suits and shiny brogues arguing the merits of a Tang porcelain vase. Their voices faded

along with their footsteps as they headed toward Jefferson Drive.

Without losing another instant Bourne checked the bypass he’d made on the alarm

system. So far it showed everything as normal. He pushed out the door. Night wind

struck his face as he saw two agents, sidearms drawn, hurrying up the granite stairs. He

had just enough time to register the oddness of the guns before he ducked back inside,

went directly to the fire call box.

They came through the door. The leading one got a face full of fire-smothering foam.

Bourne ducked a wild shot from the second agent. There was virtually no noise, but

something pinged off the Tennessee white marble wall near his shoulder, then clattered to

the floor. He hurled the fire extinguisher at the shooter. It struck him on the temple and

he went down. Bourne broke the call box’s glass, pulled hard on the red metal handle.

Instantly the fire alarm sounded, piercing every corner of the gallery.

Out the door, Bourne ran diagonally down the steps, heading west, directly for 12th

Street, SW. He expected to find more agents at the southwest corner of the building, but

as he turned off Independence Avenue onto 12th Street he encountered a flood of people

drawn to the building by the alarm. Already the sirens of fire trucks could be heard

floating through the rising chatter of the crowd.

He hurried along the street toward the entrance down to the Smithsonian Metro stop.

As he did so, he accessed the Internet through his cell. It took longer than he would have

liked, but at last he pressed the FAVORITES icon, was returned to the Metro site.

Navigating to the Smithsonian station, he scrolled down to the hyperlink to the next train

arrival, which was refreshed every thirty seconds. Three minutes to the Orange line 6

train to Vienna/Fairfax. Quickly he composed a text mail “FB,” sent it to a number he’d

prearranged with Professor Specter.

The Metro entrance, clogged with people stopped on the stairs to watch the unfolding

scenario, was a mere fifty yards away. Bourne heard police sirens now, saw a number of

unmarked cars heading down 12th Street toward Jefferson. They turned east when they

got to the junction-all except one, which headed due south.

Bourne tried to run, but he was hampered by the press of people. He broke free, into a

small area blessedly empty of the gigantic jostle, when the driver’s window of a cruising

car slid down. A burly man with a grim face and a nearly bald head aimed another one of

those strange-looking handguns at him.

Bourne twisted, putting one of the Metro entrance posts between himself and the

gunman. He heard nothing, no sound at all-just as he hadn’t back inside the Freer-and

something bit into his left calf. He looked down, saw the metal of a mini dart lying on the street. It had grazed him, but that was all. With a controlled swing, Bourne went around

the post, down the stairs, pushing his way through the gawkers into the Metro. He had

just under two minutes to make the Orange 6 to Vienna. The next train didn’t leave for

four minutes after that-too much time in the platform, waiting for the NSA agents to find

him. He had to make the first train.

He bought his ticket, went through. The crowds thinned and thickened like waves

rushing to shore. He began to sweat. His left foot slipped. Rebalancing himself, he

guessed that whatever was in that mini dart must be having an effect despite only grazing

him. Looking up at the electronic signs, he had to work to focus in order to find the

correct platform. He kept pushing forward, not trusting himself to rest, though part of him seemed hell-bent on doing just that. Sit down, close your eyes, sink into sleep. Turning to a vending machine, he fished in his pockets for change, bought every chocolate bar he

could. Then he entered the line for the escalator.

Partway down he stumbled, missed the riser, crashed into the couple ahead of him.

He’d blacked out for an instant. Gaining the platform, he felt both shaky and sluggish.

The concrete-paneled ceiling arched overhead, deadening the sounds of the hundreds

crowding the platform.

Less than a minute to go. He could feel the vibration of the oncoming train, the wind it

pushed ahead of it.

He’d gobbled down one chocolate bar and was starting on the second when the train

pulled into the station. He stepped in, allowing the surge of the crowd to take him. Just as the doors were closing, a tall man with broad shoulders and a black trench coat sprinted

into the other end of Bourne’s car. The doors closed and the train lurched forward.

Thirteen

AS HE SAW the man in the black trench making his way toward him from the end of

the train car, Bourne felt an unpleasant form of claustrophobia. Until they reached the

next station, he was trapped in this finite space, Moreover, despite the initial chocolate

hit, he was starting to feel a lassitude creeping up from his left leg as the serum entered his bloodstream. He tore off the wrapping on another chocolate bar, wolfed it down. The

faster he could get the sugar and the caffeine into his system, the better able his body

would be to fight off the effects of the drug. But that effect would only be temporary, and then his blood sugar would plummet, draining the adrenaline out of him.

The train reached Federal Triangle and the doors slid open. A mass of people got off,

another mass got on. Black Trench used the brief slackening of passengers to make

headway toward where Bourne stood, hands clasped around a chromium pole. The doors

closed, the train accelerated. Black Trench was blocked by a huge man with tattoos on

the backs of his hands. He tried to push by, but the tattooed man glared at him, refusing

to budge. Black Trench could have used his federal ID to move people out of the way,

but he didn’t, no doubt so as not to cause a panic. But whether he was NSA or CI was

still a mystery. Bourne, struggling to stop his mind from going in and out of focus, stared into the face of his newest adversary, looking for clues to his affiliation. Black Trench’s face was blocky, bland, but with the particular dry cruelty the military demanded in its

clandestine agents. He must be NSA, Bourne decided. Through the fog in his brain, he

knew he had to deal with Black Trench before the rendezvous point at Foggy Bottom.

Two children swung into Bourne as the train lurched around a bend. He held them

upright, returning them to their place beside their mother, who smiled her thanks at him,

put a protecting arm around their narrow shoulders. The train rolled into Metro Center.

Bourne saw a brief glare of temporary spotlights where a work crew was busy fixing an

escalator. On the other side of him a young blonde with earbuds leading to an MP3 player

pressed her shoulder against his, took out a cheap plastic compact, checked the state of

her makeup. Pursing her lips, she slid the compact back in her bag, dug out flavored lip

gloss. While she was applying it, Bourne lifted the compact, palming it immediately. He

replaced it with a twenty-dollar bill.

The doors opened and Bourne stepped out within a small whirlwind of people. Black

Trench, caught between doors, rushed down the car, made it onto the platform just in

time. Weaving his way through the hurrying throngs, he followed Bourne toward the

elevator. The majority of people headed for the stairs.

Bourne checked the position of the temporary spotlights. He made for them, but not at

too fast a pace. He wanted Black Trench to make up some of the distance between them.

He had to assume that Black Trench was also armed with a dart gun. If a dart struck

Bourne anywhere, even in an extremity, it would mean the end. Caffeine or no caffeine,

he’d pass out, and NSA would have him.

There was a wall of elderly and disabled people, some of them in wheelchairs, waiting

for the elevator. The door opened. Bourne sprinted ahead as if making for the elevator,

but the moment he reached the glare of the spotlights, he turned and aimed the mirror

inside the compact at an angle that reflected the dazzle into Black Trench’s face.

Momentarily blinded, Black Trench halted, put up his hand palm-outward. Bourne was

at him in a heartbeat. He drove his hand into the main nerve bundle beneath Black

Trench’s right ear, wrested the dart gun out of his hand, fired it into his side.

As the man listed to one side, staggering, Bourne caught him, dragged him to a wall.

Several people turned their heads to gape, but no one stopped. The pace of the crowd

hurrying by barely flickered before returning to full force.

Bourne left Black Trench there, eeled his way through the almost solid curtain of

people back to the Orange line. Four minutes later, he’d eaten through two more

chocolate bars. Another Orange 6 to Vienna rolled in and, with a last glance thrown over

his shoulder, he got on. His head didn’t feel any deeper in the mist, but he knew what he

needed most now was water, as much as he could get down his throat, to flush the

chemical out of his system as quickly as possible.

Two stops later, he exited at Foggy Bottom. He waited at the rear of the platform until

no more passengers got off. Then he followed them up, taking the stairs two at a time in

an attempt to further clear his head.

His first breath of cool evening air was a deep and exhilarating one. Except for a slight

nausea, perhaps caused by a continuing vertigo, he felt better. As he emerged from the

Metro exit a nearby engine coughed to life; the headlights of a dark blue Audi came on.

He walked briskly to the car, opened the passenger’s-side door, slid in.

“How did it go?” Professor Specter nosed the Audi out into the heavy traffic.

“I got more than I bargained for,” Bourne said, leaning his head against the seat rest.

“And there’s been a change of plan. People are sure to be looking for me at the airport.

I’m going with Moira, at least as far as Munich.”

A look of deep concern crossed the professor’s face. “Do you think that’s wise?”

Bourne turned his head, stared out the window at the passing city. “It doesn’t matter.”

His thoughts were of Martin, and of Moira. “I passed wise some time ago.”

Book Two

Fourteen

IT’S AMAZING,” Moira said.

Bourne looked up from the files he’d snatched from Veronica Hart. “What’s

amazing?”

“You sitting here opposite me in this opulent corporate jet.” Moira was wearing a sleek

black suit of nubbly wool, shoes with sensible heels. A thin gold chain was around her

neck. “Weren’t you supposed to be on your way to Moscow tonight?”

Bourne drank water from the bottle on his side tray table, closed the file. He needed

more time to ascertain whether Karim al-Jamil had doctored these conversations, but he

had his suspicions. He knew Martin was far too canny to tell her anything that was

classified-which covered just about everything that happened at CI.

“I couldn’t stay away from you.” He watched a small smile curl Moira’s wide lips.

Then he dropped the bomb. “Also, the NSA is after me.”

It was as if a light went out in her face. “Say again?”

“The NSA. Luther LaValle has decided to make me a target.” He waved a hand to

forestall her questions. “It’s political. If he can bag me when the CI hierarchy can’t, he’ll prove to the powers that be that his thesis that CI should come under his jurisdiction

makes sense, especially after the turmoil CI has been in since Martin’s death.”

Moira pursed her lips. “So Martin was right. He was the only one left who believed in

you.”

Bourne almost added Soraya’s name, then thought better of it. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me,” she said fiercely.

“Because you loved him.”

“We both loved him.” Her head tilted to one side. “Wait a minute, are you saying

there’s something wrong in that?”

“We live on the outskirts of society, in a world of secrets.” He deliberately included

her. “For people like us there’s always a price to pay for loving someone.”

“Like what?”

“We’ve spoken about it,” Bourne said. “Love is a weakness your enemies can exploit.”

“And I’ve said that’s a horrid way to live one’s life.”

Bourne turned to stare out the Perspex window at the darkness rushing by. “It’s the

only one I know.”

“I don’t believe that.” Moira leaned forward until their knees touched. “Surely you see

you’re more than that, Jason. You loved your wife; you love your children.”

“What kind of a father can I be to them? I’m a memory. And I’m a danger to them.

Soon enough I’ll be a ghost.”

“You can do something about that. And what kind of friend were you to Martin? The

best kind. The only kind that matters.” She tried to get him to turn back to her.

“Sometimes I’m convinced you’re looking for answers to questions that have none.”

“What does that mean?”

“That no matter what you’ve done in the past, no matter what you’ll do in the future,

you’ll never lose your humanity.” She watched his eyes engage hers slowly,

enigmatically. “That’s the one thing that frightens you, isn’t it?”

What’s the matter with you?” Devra asked.

Arkadin, behind the wheel of a rental car they had picked up in Istanbul, grunted

irritably. “What’re you talking about?”

“How long is it going to take you to fuck me?”

There being no flights from Sevastopol to Turkey, they’d spent a long night in a

cramped cabin of the Heroes of Sevastopol, being transported southwest across the Black

Sea from Ukraine to Turkey.

“Why would I want to do that?” Arkadin said as he headed off a lumbering truck on

the highway.

“Every man I meet wants to fuck me. Why should you be any different?” Devra ran

her hands through her hair. Her raised arms lifted her small breasts invitingly. “Like I

said. What’s the matter with you?” A smirk played at the corners of her mouth. “Maybe

you’re not a real man. Is that it?”

Arkadin laughed. “You’re so transparent.” He glanced at her briefly. “What’s your

game? Why are you trying to provoke me?”

“I like to extract reactions in my men. How else will I get to know them?”

“I’m not your man,” he growled.

Now Devra laughed. She wrapped slender fingers around his arm, rubbing back and

forth. “If your shoulder’s bothering you I’ll drive.”

He saw the familiar symbol on the inside of her wrist, all the more fearsome for being

tattooed on the porcelain skin. “When did you get that?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. What matters is why you got it.” Faced with open highway, he put on

speed. “How else will I get to know you?”

She scratched the tattoo as if it had moved beneath her skin. “Pyotr made me get it. He

said it was part of the initiation. He said he wouldn’t go to bed with me until I got it.”

“And you wanted to go to bed with him.”

“Not as much as I want to go to bed with you.”

She turned away then, stared out the side window, as if she was suddenly embarrassed

by her confession. Perhaps she actually was, Arkadin thought as he signaled, moving

right through two lanes as a sign for a rest stop appeared. He turned off the highway,

parked at the far end of the rest stop, away from the two vehicles that occupied parking

slots. He got out, walked to the edge, and, with his back to her, took a long satisfying pee.

The day was bright and warmer than it had been in Sevastopol. The breeze coming off

the water was laden with moisture that lay on his skin like sweat. On the way back to the

car he rolled up his sleeves. His coat was slung with hers across the car’s backseat.

“We’d better enjoy this warmth while we can,” Devra said. “Once we get onto the

Anatolian Plateau, the mountains will block this temperate weather. It’ll be colder than a

witch’s teat.”

It was as if she’d never made the intimate statement. But she’d caught his attention, all

right. It seemed to him now that he understood something important about her-or, more

accurately, about himself. It went through Gala, as well, now that he thought of it. He

seemed to have a certain power over women. He knew Gala loved him with every fiber

of her being, and she wasn’t the first one. Now this slim tomboyish dyevochka, hard-

bitten, downright nasty when she needed to be, had fallen under his spell. Which meant

he had the handle on her he was searching for.

“How many times have you been to Eskisёehir?” he asked.

“Enough to know what to expect.”

He sat back. “Where did you learn to answer questions without revealing a thing?”

“If I’m bad, I learned it at my mother’s breast.”

Arkadin looked away. He seemed to have trouble breathing. Without a word, he

opened the door, bolted outside, stalking in small circles like a lion in the zoo.

I cannot be alone,” Arkadin had said to Semion Icoupov, and Icoupov had taken him at

his word. At Icoupov’s villa where Arkadin was installed, his host provided a young man.

But when, a week later, Arkadin had beaten his companion nearly into a coma, Icoupov

switched tactics. He spent hours with Arkadin, trying to determine the root of his

outbursts of fury. This failed utterly, as Arkadin seemed at a loss to remember, let alone

explain these frightening episodes.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” Icoupov said. “I don’t want to incarcerate you, but

I need to protect myself.”

“I would never harm you,” Arkadin said.

“Not knowingly, perhaps,” the older man said ruminatively.

The following week a stoop-shouldered man with a formal goatee and colorless lips

spent every afternoon with Arkadin. He sat in a plush upholstered chair, one leg crossed

over the other, writing in a neat, crabbed hand in a tablet notebook he protected as if it

were his child. For his part, Arkadin lay on his host’s favorite chaise longue, a roll pillow behind his head. He answered questions. He spoke at length about many things, but the

things that shadowed his mind he kept tucked away in a black corner of the deepest

depths of his mind, never to be spoken of. That door was closed forever.

At the end of three weeks, the psychiatrist handed in his report to Icoupov and

vanished as quickly as he had appeared. No matter. Arkadin’s nightmares continued to

haunt him in the dead of night when, upon awakening with a gasp and a start, he was

convinced he heard rats scuttling, red eyes burning in the darkness. At those moments,

the fact that Icoupov’s villa was completely vermin-free was of no solace to him. The rats

lived inside him squirming, shrieking, feeding.

The next person Icoupov employed to burrow into Arkadin’s past in an attempt to cure

him of his fits of rage was a woman whose sensuality and lush figure he felt would keep

her safe from Arkadin’s outbursts of fury. Marlene was adept at handling men of all kinds

and kinks. She possessed an uncanny ability to sense the specific thing a man desired

from her, and provide it.

At first Arkadin didn’t trust Marlene. Why should he? He couldn’t trust the

psychiatrist. Wasn’t she just another form of analyst sent to coax out the secrets of his

past? Marlene of course noted this aversion in him and set about countering it. The way

she saw it, Arkadin was living under a spell, self-induced or otherwise. It was up to her to concoct an antidote.

“This won’t be a short process,” she told Icoupov at the end of her first week with

Arkadin, and he believed her.

Arkadin observed Marlene walking on little cat feet. He suspected she was smart

enough to know that even the slightest misstep on her part might strike him as a seismic

shift, and then all the progress she’d made in gaining his trust would evaporate like

alcohol over a flame. She seemed to him wary, acutely aware that at any moment he

could turn on her. She acted as if she were in a cage with a bear. Day by day you could

track the training of it, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t unexpectedly rip your face off.

Arkadin had to laugh at that, the care with which she was treating every aspect of him.

But gradually something else began to creep into his consciousness. He suspected that

she was coming to feel something genuine for him.

Devra watched Arkadin through the windshield. Then she kicked open her door, went

after him. She shaded her eyes against a white sun plastered to a high, pale sky.

“What is it?” she said when she’d caught up to him. “What did I say?”

Arkadin turned a murderous look her way. He appeared to be in a towering rage, just

barely holding himself together. Devra found herself wondering what would happen if he

let himself go, but she also didn’t want to be in his way when it happened.

She felt an urge to touch him, to speak soothingly until he returned to a calmer state of

mind, but she sensed that would only inflame him further. So she went back to the car to

wait patiently for him to return.

Eventually he did, sitting sideways on the seat, his shoes on the ground as if he might

bolt again.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”

She felt he wanted to say something else, but couldn’t, that whatever it was was too

bound up in what had happened to him a long time ago.

“It was a joke,” she said softly. “I was making a stupid joke.”

“There was a time when I would’ve thought nothing of it,” he said, as if talking to

himself. “Sex is unimportant.”

She sensed that he was speaking about something else, something only he knew, and

she glimpsed just how alone he was. She suspected that even in a crowd, even with

friends-if he had any-he’d feel alone. It seemed to her that he’d walled himself off from

sexual melding because it would underscore the depth of his apartness. He seemed to her

to be a moonless planet with no sun to revolve around. Just emptiness everywhere as far

as he could see. In that moment she realized that she loved him.

How long has he been in there?” Luther LaValle asked.

“Six days,” General Kendall replied. He was in his shirtsleeves, which were turned up.

That precaution hadn’t been enough to protect them from spatters of blood. “But I

guarantee that to him it feels like six months. He’s as disoriented as it’s possible for a

human being to be.”

LaValle grunted, peering at the bearded Arab through the one-way mirror. The man

looked like a raw piece of meat. LaValle didn’t know or care whether he was Sunni or

Shi’a. They were the same to him-terrorists bent on destroying his way of life. He took

these matters very personally.

“What’s he given up?”

“Enough that we know the copies of the Typhon intercepts Batt has given us are

disinformation.”

“Still,” LaValle said, “it comes straight from Typhon.”

“This man’s very highly placed, there’s no question whatsoever of his identity, and he

knows of no plans moving into their final stages to hit a major New York building.”

“That in itself could be disinformation,” LaValle said. “These bastards are masters of

that kind of shit.”

“Right.” Kendall wiped his hands on a towel he’d thrown over his shoulder like a chef

at the stove. “They love nothing better than to see us running around in circles, chasing

our tails, which is what we’ll be doing if we put out an alert.”

LaValle nodded, as if to himself. “I want our best people to follow up on it. Confirm

the Typhon intercepts.”

“We’ll do our best, but I feel it my duty to report that the prisoner laughed in my face

when I asked him about this terrorist group.”

LaValle snapped his fingers several times. “What are they called again?”

“The Black Lesion, the Black Legion, something like that.”

“Nothing in our database about this group?”

“No, or at any of our sister agencies, either.” Kendall threw the soiled towel into a

basket whose contents were incinerated every twelve hours. “It doesn’t exist.”

“I tend to agree,” LaValle said, “but I’d like to be certain.”

He turned from the window, and the two men went out of the viewing room. They

walked down a rough concrete corridor painted an institutional green, the buzzing

fluorescent tubes that hurled purple shadows on the linoleum floor as they passed. He

waited patiently outside the locker room for Kendall to change his clothes; then they

proceeded down the corridor. At the end of it they climbed a flight of stairs to a

reinforced metal door.

LaValle pressed his forefinger onto a fingerprint reader. He was rewarded by the

clicking of bolts being shot, not unlike a bank vault opening.

They found themselves in another corridor, the polar opposite of the one they were

leaving. This one was paneled in polished mahogany; wall sconces produced a soft,

buttery glow between paintings of historical naval engagements, phalanxes of Roman

legions, Prussian Hussars, and English light cavalry.

The first door on the left brought them into a room straight out of a high-toned men’s

club, replete with hunter-green walls, cream moldings, leather furniture, antique

breakfronts, and a wooden bar from an old English pub. The sofas and chairs were well

spaced, the better to allow occupants to speak of private matters. Flames cracked and

sparked comfortingly in a large fireplace.

A liveried butler met them before they’d taken three steps on the thick, sound-

deadening carpet. He guided them to their accustomed spot, in a discreet corner where

two high-backed leather chairs were arranged on either side of a mahogany pedestal card

table. They were near a tall, mullioned window flanked by thick drapes, which

overlooked the Virginia countryside. This club-like room, known as the Library, was in

an enormous stone house that the NSA had taken over decades ago. It was used as a

retreat as well as for formal dinners for the generals and directors of the organization. Its lower depths, however, were used for other purposes.

When they had ordered drinks and light refreshments, and were alone again, LaValle

said, “Do we have a line on Bourne yet?”

“Yes and no.” Kendall crossed one leg over the other, arranging the crease in his

trousers. “As per our previous briefing, he came onto the grid at six thirty-seven last

night, passing through Immigration at Dulles. He was booked on a Lufthansa flight to

Moscow. Had he showed we could’ve put McNally onto the flight.”

“Bourne’s far too clever for that,” LaValle grumbled. “He knows we’re after him now.

The element of surprise has been neutralized, dammit.”

“We managed to discover that he boarded a NextGen Energy Solutions corporate jet.”

Like a hunting dog on alert, Lavalle’s head came up. “Really? Explain.”

“An executive by the name of Moira Trevor was on it.”

“What is she to Bourne?”

“A question we’re trying to answer,” Kendall said unhappily. He hated disappointing

his boss. “In the meantime, we obtained a copy of the flight plan. The destination was

Munich. Shall I activate a point man there?”

“Don’t waste your time.” LaValle waved a hand. “My money’s on Moscow. That’s

where he meant to go, that’s where he’s going.”

“I’ll get right on it.” Kendall opened his cell phone.

“I want Anthony Prowess.”

“He’s in Afghanistan.”

“Then pull him the fuck out,” LaValle said shortly. “Get him on a military chopper. I

want him on the ground in Moscow by the time Bourne gets there.”

Kendall nodded, punched in a special encrypted number, and typed the coded text

message to Prowess.

LaValle smiled at the approaching waiter. “Thank you, Willard,” he said as the man

snapped out a starched white tablecloth, arranged the glasses of whiskey, small plates of

nibbles, and cutlery on the table, then departed as silently as he’d come.

LaValle stared at the food. “It seems we’ve backed the wrong horse.”

General Kendall knew he meant Rob Batt. “Soraya Moore witnessed the debacle.

She’s put two and two together in short order. Batt told us he knew about Hart’s meet

with Bourne because he was in her office when Bourne’s call came in. Other than the

Moore woman, who else is she likely to have told? No one. That’ll lead Hart right back to

the deputy director.”

“Hang him out to dry.”

Picking up his glass, Kendall said. “Time for Plan B.”

LaValle stared into the chestnut liquid. “I always thank God for Plan B, Richard.

Always.”

Their glasses clinked together. They drank in studied silence while LaValle ruminated.

When, half an hour later, they’d drained their whiskeys and new ones were in their hands,

LaValle said, “On the subject of Soraya Moore, I do believe it’s time to bring her in for a chat.”

“Private?”

“Oh, yes.” LaValle added a dollop of water his whiskey, releasing its complex scent.