Текст книги "The Bourne Sanction (Санкция Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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fact that LaValle, who was, after all, basically the mouthpiece for Defense Secretary

Halliday, had the muscle to call this meeting shouldn’t have surprised her. But that the

president was asking her to consider a takeover from the Pentagon was outrageous and,

quite frankly, frightening.

Without even glancing at the toxic papers, she squared her shoulders. “Sir, this

proposal is irrelevant, at best. I resent Mr. LaValle’s flagrant attempt to expand his

intelligence empire at CI’s expense. For one thing, as I’ve detailed, the Pentagon is ill

suited to direct, let alone win the trust of our vast array of agents in the field. For another, this coup would set a dangerous precedent for the entire intelligence community. Being

under the control of the armed forces will not benefit our intelligence-gathering potential.

On the contrary, the Pentagon’s history of flagrant disregard for human life, its legacy of illegal operations combined with well-documented fiscal profligacy, makes it an

extremely poor candidate to poach on anyone else’s territory, especially CI’s.”

Only the presence of the president forced LaValle to keep his ire in check. “Sir, CI is

in total disarray. It needs to be turned around ASAP. As I said, our plan can be

implemented today.”

Veronica drew out the thick file detailing her plans for CI. She rose, placed it in the

president’s hands. “Sir, I feel duty-bound to reiterate one of the main points of our last

discussion. Though I’ve served in the military, I come from the private sector. CI is in

need not only of a clean sweep but of a fresh perspective untainted by the monolithic

thinking that got us into this insupportable situation in the first place.”

Jason Bourne smiled. “To be honest, tonight I don’t know who I am.” He leaned

forward and said very softly, “Listen to me. I want you to take your cell phone out of

your handbag without anyone seeing. I want you to call me. Can you do that?”

Moira kept her eyes on his as she found her cell in her handbag, hit the appropriate

speed-dial key. His cell phone chimed. He sat back, answered the call. He spoke into the

phone as if someone was on the other end of the line. Then he closed the phone, said, “I

have to go. It’s an emergency. I’m sorry.”

She continued to stare at him. “Could you act even the least bit upset?” she whispered.

His mouth turned down.

“Do you really have to go?” she said in a normal tone of voice. “Now?”

“Now.” Bourne threw some bills on the table. “I’ll be in touch.”

She nodded a bit quizzically, wondering what he’d seen or heard.

Bourne went down the stairs and out of the restaurant. Immediately he turned right,

walked a quarter block, then entered a store selling handmade ceramics. Positioning

himself so that he had a view of the street through the plate-glass window, he pretended

to look at bowls and serving dishes.

Outside, people passed by-a young couple, an elderly man with a cane, three young

women, laughing. But the man who’d been seated in the back corner of their room

precisely ninety seconds after they sat down did not appear. Bourne had marked him the

moment he’d come in, and when he’d asked for a table in back facing them, he’d had no

doubt: Someone was following him. All of a sudden he’d felt that old anxiety that had

roiled him when Marie and Martin had been threatened. He’d lost Martin, he wasn’t

about to lose Moira as well.

Bourne, whose interior radar had swept the second-floor dining room every few

minutes or so, hadn’t picked up anyone else of a suspicious nature, so he waited now

inside the ceramics shop for the tail to amble by. When this didn’t occur after five

minutes, Bourne went out the door and immediately strode across the street. Using

streetlights and the reflective surfaces of windows and car mirrors, he spent another few

minutes scrutinizing the area for any sign of the man at the table in back. After

ascertaining he was nowhere to be found, Bourne returned to the restaurant.

He went up the stairs to the second floor, but paused in the dark hallway between the

staircase and the dining room. There was the man at his rear table. To any casual observer

he seemed to be reading the current issue of The Washingtonian, like any good tourist,

but every once in a while his gaze flicked upward for a fraction of a second, focused on

Moira.

Bourne felt a little chill go through him. This man wasn’t following him; he was

following Moira.

As Veronica Hart emerged through the outermost checkpoint to the West Wing, Luther

LaValle emerged from the shadows, fell into step beside her.

“Nicely done,” he said icily. “Next time I’ll be better prepared.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Veronica said.

“Secretary Halliday is confident there will be. So am I.”

They had reached the hushed vestibule with its dome and columns. Busy presidential

aides strode purposefully past them in either direction. Like surgeons, they exuded an air

of supreme confidence and exclusivity, as if theirs was a club you desperately wanted to

belong to, but never would.

“Where’s your personal pit bull?” Veronica asked. “Sniffing out crotches, I shouldn’t

wonder.”

“You’re terribly flip for someone whose job is hanging by a thread.”

“It’s foolish-not to mention dangerous, Mr. LaValle-to confuse confidence with being

flip.”

They pushed through the doors, went down the steps to the grounds proper. Floodlights

pushed back the darkness to the edges of the premises. Beyond, streetlights glittered.

“Of course, you’re right,” LaValle said. “I apologize.”

Veronica eyed him with no little skepticism.

LaValle gave her a small smile. “I sincerely regret that we’ve gotten off on the wrong

foot.”

What he really regrets, Veronica thought, is my pulling him and Kendall to pieces in

front of the president.Understandable, really.

As she buttoned her coat, he said, “Perhaps both of us have been coming at this

situation from the wrong angle.”

Veronica knotted her scarf at her throat outside her collar. “What situation?”

“The collapse of CI.”

In the near distance, beyond the flotilla of heavy reinforced concrete anti-terrorist

barriers, tourists strolled by, chatting animatedly, paused briefly to take snapshots, then went on to their dinners at McDonald’s or Burger King.

“It seems to me that more can be gained by us joining forces than by being

antagonists.”

Veronica turned to him. “Listen, buddy, you take care of your shop and I’ll take care of

mine. I’ve been given a job to do and I’m going to do it without interference from you or

Secretary Halliday. Personally, I’m sick and tired of you people extending the line in the

sand farther and farther so your empire can grow bigger. CI is off limits to you now and

forever, got it?”

LaValle made a face as if he were about to whistle. Then he said, very quietly, “I’d be

a bit more careful if I were you. You’re walking across a knife-edge. One false step, one

hesitation, and when you fall no one’s going to be there to catch you.”

Her voice turned steely. “I’ve had my fill of your threats, too, Mr. LaValle.”

He turned up his collar against the wind. “When you get to know me better, Veronica,

you’ll realize I don’t make threats. I make predictions.”

Three

THE VIOLENCE of the Black Sea fit Leonid Arkadin down to his steel-tipped shoes.

In a tumultuous rain, he drove into Sevastopol from Belbek Aerodrome. Sevastopol

inhabited a coveted bit of territory on the southwestern edge of the Crimean peninsula of

Ukraine. Because the area was blessed with subtropical weather, its seas never froze.

From the time of its founding by Greek traders as Chersonesus in 422 BC, Sevastopol

was a vital commercial and military outpost for fishing fleets and naval armadas alike.

Following the decline of Chersonesus-“peninsula,” in Greek-the area fell into ruin until

the modern-day Sevastopol was founded in 1783 as a naval base and fortress on the

southern boundaries of the Russian Empire. Most of the city’s history was linked to its

military glory-the name Sevastopol translated from Greek means “august, glorious.” The

name seemed justified: The city survived two bloody sieges during the Crimean War of

1854-1855 and World War Two, when it withstood Axis bombing for 250 days.

Although the city was destroyed on two different occasions, it had risen from the ashes

both times. As a result, the inhabitants were tough, no-nonsense people. They despised

the Cold War era, dating to roughly 1960 when, because of its naval base, the USSR

ordered Sevastopol off limits to visitors of all kinds. In 1997 the Russians agreed to

return the city to the Ukrainians, who opened it again.

It was late afternoon when Arkadin arrived on Primorskiy Boulevard. The sky was

black, except for a thin red line along the western horizon. The port bulged with round-

hulled fishing ships and sleek steel-hulled naval vessels. An angry sea lashed the

Monument to Scuttled Ships, commemorating the 1855 last-ditch defense of the city

against the combined forces of the British, French, Turks, and Sardinians. It rose from a

bed of rough granite blocks in a Corinthian column three yards high, crowned by an eagle

with wings spread wide, its proud head bent, a laurel wreath gripped in its beak. Facing it, embedded in the thick seawall, were the anchors of the Russian ships that were

deliberately sunk to block the harbor from the invading enemy.

Arkadin checked into the Hotel Oblast where everything, including the walls, seemed

to be made of paper. The furniture was covered in fabric of hideous patterns whose colors

clashed like enemies on a battlefield. The place seemed a likely candidate to go up like a

torch. He made a mental note not to smoke in bed.

Downstairs, in the space that passed for a lobby, he asked the rodent-like clerk for a

recommendation for a hot meal, then requested a telephone book. Taking it, he retired to

an understuffed upholstered chair by a window that overlooked Admiral Nakhimov

Square. And there he was on a magnificent plinth, the hero of the first defense of

Sevastopol, staring stonily at Arkadin, as if aware of what was to come. This was a city,

like so many in the former Soviet Union, filled with monuments to the past.

With a last glance at slope-shouldered pedestrians hurrying through the driving rain,

Arkadin turned his attention to the phone book. The name that Pyotr Zilber had given up

just before he’d committed suicide was Oleg Shumenko. Arkadin dearly would have

loved to have gotten more out of Zilber. Now Arkadin had to page through the phone

book looking for Shumenko, assuming the man had a landline, which was always

problematic outside Moscow or St. Petersburg. He made note of the five Oleg

Shumenkos listed, handed the book back to the clerk, and went out into the windy false

dusk.

The first three Oleg Shumenkos were of no help. Arkadin, posing as a close friend of

Pyotr Zilber’s, told each of them that he had a message from Pyotr so urgent it had to be

transmitted in person. They looked at him blankly, shook their heads. He could see in

their eyes they had no idea who Pyotr Zilber was.

The fourth Shumenko worked at Yugreftransflot, which maintained the largest fleet of

refrigerated ships in Ukraine. Since Yugreftransflot was a public corporation, it took

Arkadin some time just to get in to see Shumenko, who was a transport manager. Like

everywhere in the former USSR, the red tape was enough to grind all work to a near halt.

How anything got done in the public sector was beyond Arkadin.

At length, Shumenko appeared, led Arkadin to his tiny office, apologizing for the

delay. He was a small man with very dark hair and the small ears and low forehead of a

Neanderthal. When Arkadin introduced himself, Shumenko said, “Obviously, you have

the wrong man. I don’t know a Pyotr Zilber.”

Arkadin consulted his list. “I only have one more Oleg Shumenko left.”

“Let me see.” Shumenko consulted the list. “Pity you didn’t come to me first. These

three are my cousins. And the fifth, the one you haven’t seen yet, won’t be of any use to

you. He’s dead. Fishing accident six months ago.” He handed back the list. “But all isn’t

lost. There’s one other Oleg Shumenko. Though we’re not related, people are always

getting us confused because we have the same patronymic, Ivanovich. He doesn’t have a

landline, which is why I’m constantly getting his calls.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko checked his watch. “At this hour, yes, he’d be at work. He’s

a winemaker, you see. Champagne. I understand the French say you’re not allowed to use

that term for any wine not produced in their Champagne region.” He chuckled. “Still, the

Sevastopol Winery turns out quite a fine champagne.”

He led Arkadin from his office out through dull corridors into the enormous main

vestibule. “Are you familiar with the city, gospadin Arkadin? Sevastopol is divided into

five districts. We’re in the Gagarinskiy district, named after the world’s first astronaut, Yuri Alexeevich Gagarin. This is the western section of the city. To the north is the

Nakhimovskiy district, which is where the mammoth dry docks are. Perhaps you’ve

heard of them. No? No matter. In the eastern section, away from the water, is the rural

area of the city-pasturelands and vineyards, magnificent even at this time of the year.”

He crossed the marble floor to a long banc behind which sat half a dozen functionaries

looking as if they’d had little to do in the past year. From one of them Shumenko

received a city map, which he drew on. Then he handed it to Arkadin, pointing at a star

he’d marked.

“There’s the winery.” He glanced outside. “The sky’s clearing. Who knows, by the

time you get there, you may even see some sun.”

Bourne walked the streets of Georgetown securely hidden within the crowds of college

and university kids prowling the cobbles, looking for beer, girls, and guys. He was

discreetly shadowing the man in the restaurant, who was, in turn, following Moira.

Once he had determined that the man was her tail, he’d backed away and returned to

the street, where he’d called Moira.

“Can you think of anyone who wants to keep tabs on you?”

“I guess several,” she said. “My own company, for one. I told you they’ve become

paranoid ever since we started to build the LNG station in Long Beach. NoHold Energy

might be another. They’ve been waving a vice president’s job at me for six months. I

could see them wanting to know more about me so they can sweeten their offer.”

“Other than those two?”

“No.”

He’d told her what he wanted her to do, and now in the Georgetown night she was

doing it. They always had habits, these watchers in the shadows, little peculiarities built up from all the boring hours spent at their lonely jobs. This one liked to be on the inside of the sidewalk so he could duck quickly into a doorway if need be.

Once he had the shadow’s idiosyncracies down, it was time to take him out. But as

Bourne worked his way through the crowds, moving closer to the shadow, he saw

something else. The man wasn’t alone. A second tail had taken up a parallel position on

the opposite side of the street, which made sense. If Moira decided to cross the street in

this throng, the first shadow might run into some difficulty keeping her in sight. These

people, whoever they were, were leaving little to chance.

Bourne melted back, matching his pace to that of the crowd’s. At the same time, he

called Moira. She’d put in her Bluetooth earpiece so she could take his call without being

conspicuous. Bourne gave her detailed instructions, then broke off following her

shadows.

Moira, the back of her neck tingling as if she were in the crosshairs of an assassin’s

rifle, crossed the street, walked over to M Street. The main thing for her to keep in mind, Jason said, was to move at a normal pace, neither fast nor slow. Jason had alarmed her

with the news that she was being followed. She had merely maintained the illusion of

being calm. There were many people from both present and past who might be following

her-a number of whom she hadn’t mentioned when Jason had asked. Still, so close to the

opening of the LNG terminal it was an ominous sign. She had desperately wanted to

share with Jason the intel that had come to her today about the possibility of the terminal being a terrorist target, not in theory, but in reality. However, she couldn’t-not unless he was an employee of the company. She was bound by her ironclad contract not to tell

anyone outside the firm any confidential information.

At 31st Street NW, she turned south, walking toward the Canal Towpath. A third of the

way down the block, on her side, was a discreet plaque on which the word JEWEL was

etched. She opened the ruby-colored door, entered the high-priced new restaurant. This

was the kind of place where dishes were accessorized with kaffir lime foam, freeze-dried

ginger, and ruby grapefruit pearls.

Smiling sweetly at the manager, she told him that she was looking for a friend. Before

he could check his reservation book, she said her friend was with a man whose name she

didn’t know. She’d been here several times, once with Jason, so she knew the layout. At

the rear of the second room was a short corridor. Against the right-hand wall were two

unisex bathrooms. If you kept on going, which she did, you came to the kitchen, all bright

lights, stainless-steel pans, copper pots, huge stovetops raging at high heat. Young men

and women moved around the room in what seemed to her like military precision-sous-

chefs, line cooks, expediters, the pastry chef and her staff, all performing under the stern commands of the chef de cuisine.

They were all too concentrated on their respective tasks to give Moira much notice. By

the time her figure did register she’d already disappeared out the rear door. In a back

alley filled with Dumpsters, a White Top cab was waiting, its engine purring. She

climbed in and the cab took off.

Arkadin drove through the hills of rural Nakhimovskiy district, lush even in winter. He

passed checkered farmland, bounded by low forested areas. The sky was lightening, the

dark, rain-laden clouds already disappearing, replaced by high cumulus that glowed like

embers in the sunlight that broke through everywhere. A golden sheen covered the acres

of vineyards as he approached the Sevastopol Winery. At this time of year there were no

leaves or fruit, of course, but the twisted, stunted boles, like the trunks of elephants, bore a life of their own that gave the vineyard a certain mystery, a mythic aspect, as if these

sleeping vines needed only the spell of a wizard to come awake.

A burly woman named Yetnikova introduced herself as Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko’s

immediate supervisor-there was, apparently, no end to the tiers of supervisors in the

winery. She had shoulders as wide as Arkadin’s, a red, round, vodka face with features as

curiously small as those of a doll. She wore her hair tied up in a peasant babushka, but

she was all bristling business.

When she demanded to know Arkadin’s business, he whipped out one of many false

credentials he carried. This one identified him as a colonel in the SBU, the Security

Service of Ukraine. Upon seeing the SBU card, Yetnikova wilted like an unwatered plant

and showed him where to find Shumenko.

Arkadin, following her direction, went down corridor after corridor. He opened each

door he came to, peering inside offices, utility closets, storerooms, and the like,

apologizing to the occupants as he did so.

Shumenko was working in the fermentation room when Arkadin found him. He was a

reed-thin man, much younger than Arkadin had imagined-no more than thirty or so. He

had thick hair the color of goldenrod that stood up from his scalp like a series of

cockscombs. Music spilled out from a portable player-a British band, the Cure. Arkadin

had heard the song many times in Moscow clubs, but it seemed startling here in the hind

end of the Crimea.

Shumenko stood on a catwalk four yards in the air, bent over a stainless-steel apparatus

as large as a blue whale. He seemed to be sniffing something, possibly the latest batch of

champagne he was concocting. Rather than turn down the music, Shumenko gestured for

Arkadin to join him.

Without hesitation Arkadin mounted the vertical ladder, climbed swiftly up to the

catwalk. The yeasty, slightly sweet odors of fermentation tickled his nostrils, causing him to rub the end of his nose vigorously to stave off a sneezing fit. His practiced gaze swept the immediate vicinity taking in every last detail, no matter how minute.

“Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko?”

The reedy young man put aside a clipboard on which he was taking notes. “At your

service.” He wore a badly fitting suit. He placed the pen he had been using in his breast

pocket, where it joined a line of others. “And you would be?”

“A friend of Pyotr Zilber’s.”

“Never heard of him.”

But his eyes had already betrayed him. Arkadin reached out, turned up the music.

“He’s heard of you, Oleg Ivanovich. In fact, you’re quite important to him.”

Shumenko plastered a simulated smile on his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking

about.”

“There was a grave mistake made. He needs the document back.”

Shumenko, smiling still, jammed his hands in his pockets. “Once again, I must tell

you-”

Arkadin made a grab for him, but Shumenko’s right hand reappeared, gripping a GSh-

18 semi-automatic that was pointed at Arkadin’s heart.

“Hmm. The sights are acceptable at best,” Arkadin said.

“Please don’t move. Whoever you are-and don’t bother to give me a name that in any

case will be false-you’re no friend of Pyotr’s. He must be dead. Perhaps even by your

hand.”

“But the trigger pull is relatively heavy,” Arkadin continued, as if he hadn’t been

listening, “so that’ll give me an extra tenth of a second.”

“A tenth of a second is nothing.”

“It’s all I need.”

Shumenko backed up, as Arkadin wanted him to, toward the curved side of a container

to keep a safer distance. “Even while I mourn Pyotr’s death I will defend our network

with my life.”

He backed up farther as Arkadin took another step toward him.

“It’s a long fall from here so I suggest you turn around, climb back down the ladder,

and disappear into whatever sewer you crawled out of.”

As Shumenko retreated, his right foot skidded on a bit of yeast paste Arkadin had

noted earlier. Shumenko’s right knee went out from under him, the hand holding the

GSh-18 raised in an instinctive gesture to help keep him from falling.

In one long stride Arkadin was inside the perimeter of his defense. He made a grab for

the gun, missed. His fist struck Shumenko on the right cheek, sending the reedy man

lurching back into the side of the container in the space between two protruding levers.

Shumenko slashed his arm in a horizontal arc, the sight on the barrel of the GSh-18

raking across the bridge of Arkadin’s nose, drawing blood.

Arkadin made another lunge at the semi-automatic and, bent back against the curved

sheet of stainless steel, the two men grappled. Shumenko was surprisingly strong for a

thin man, and he was proficient in hand-to-hand combat. He had the proper counter for

every attack Arkadin threw at him. They were very close now, not a hand’s span

separating them. Their limbs worked quickly, hands, elbows, forearms, even shoulders

used to produce pain or, in blocking, minimize it.

Gradually, Arkadin seemed to be getting the better of his adversary, but with a double

feint Shumenko managed to get the butt of the GSh-18 lodged against Arkadin’s throat.

He pressed in, using leverage in an attempt to crush Arkadin’s windpipe. One of

Arkadin’s hands was trapped between their bodies. With the other, he pounded

Shumenko’s side, but he lacked Shumenko’s leverage, and his blows did no damage.

When he tried for Shumenko’s kidney, the other man twisted his hips away, so his hand

glanced off the hip bone.

Shumenko pressed his advantage, bending Arkadin over the railing, trying with the

butt of his gun and his upper body to shove Arkadin off the catwalk. Ribbons of darkness

flowed across Arkadin’s vision, a sign that his brain was becoming oxygen-starved. He

had underestimated Shumenko, and now he was about to pay the price.

He coughed, then gagged, trying to breathe. Then he moved his free hand up against

the front of Shumenko’s jacket. It would seem to Shumenko-concentrating on killing the

interloper-as if Arkadin was making one last futile attempt to free his trapped hand. He

was taken completely off guard when Arkadin slipped a pen out of his breast pocket,

stabbed it into his left eye.

Immediately Shumenko reared back. Arkadin caught the GSh-18 as it dropped from

the stricken man’s nerveless hand. As Shumenko slid to the catwalk, Arkadin grabbed

him by the shirtfront, knelt to be on the same level with him.

“The document,” he said. And when Shumenko’s head began to loll, “Oleg Ivanovich,

listen to me. Where is the document?”

The man’s good eye glistened, running with tears. His mouth worked. Arkadin shook

him until he moaned with pain.

“Where?”

“Gone.”

Arkadin had to bend his head to hear Shumenko’s whisper over the loud music. The

Cure had been replaced by Siouxsie and the Banshees.

“What d’you mean gone?”

“Down the pipeline.” Shumenko’s mouth curled in the semblance of a smile. “Not

what you wanted to hear, ‘friend of Pyotr Zilber,’ is it?” He blinked tears out of his good eye. “Since this is the end of the line for you, bend closer and I’ll tell you a secret.” He licked his lips as Arkadin complied, then lunged forward and bit into the lobe of

Arkadin’s right ear.

Arkadin reacted without thinking. He jammed the muzzle of the GSh-18 into

Shumenko’s mouth, pulled the trigger. Almost at the same instant, he realized his

mistake, said “Shit!” in six different languages.

Four

BOURNE, sunk deep into the shadows opposite the restaurant Jewel, saw the two men

emerge. By the annoyed expressions on their faces he knew they’d lost Moira. He kept

them in sight as they moved off together. One of them began to speak into a cell phone.

He paused for a moment to ask his colleague a question, then returned to his conversation

on the phone. By this time the two had reached M Street, NW. Finished with his call, the

man put his cell phone away. They waited on the corner, watching the nubile young girls

slipping by. They didn’t slouch, Bourne noted, but stood ramrod-straight, their hands in

view, at their sides. It appeared that they were waiting to be picked up; a good call on a

night like this when parking was at a premium and traffic on M Street, as thick as

molasses.

Bourne, without a vehicle, looked around, saw a bicyclist coming up 31st Street, NW,

from the towpath. He was cycling along the gutter to avoid the traffic. Bourne walked

smartly toward him and stepped in front of him. The cyclist stopped short, uttering a

sharp exclamation.

“I need your bike,” Bourne said.

“Well, you bloody well can’t have it, mate,” the cyclist said with a heavy British

accent.

At the corner of 31st and M, a black GMC SUV was pulling into the curb in front of

the two men.

Bourne pressed four hundred dollars into the cyclist’s hand. “Like I said, right now.”

The young man stared down at the money for a moment. Then he swung off, said, “Be

my guest.”

As Bourne mounted up, he handed over his helmet. “You’ll be wanting this, mate.”

The two men had already vanished into the GMC’s interior, the SUV was pulling out

into the thick traffic flow. Bourne took off, leaving the cyclist to shrug behind him as he climbed onto the sidewalk.

Reaching the corner, Bourne turned right onto M Street. The GMC was three cars

ahead of him. Bourne wove his way around the traffic, moving into position to keep up

with the SUV. At 30th Street, NW, they all hit a red light. Bourne was forced to put one

foot down, which was why he got a late start when the GMC jumped the light just before

it turned green. The SUV roared ahead of the other vehicles, and Bourne launched

himself forward. A white Toyota was coming from 30th into the intersection, heading

right for him at a ninety-degree angle. Bourne put on a burst of speed, swerved up onto

the corner sidewalk, backing a clutch of pedestrians into those behind them, to a round of

curses. The Toyota, horn blaring angrily, just missed him as it jounced across M Street.

Bourne was able to make good headway, as the GMC had been slowed by the sludgy

traffic up ahead, splitting off where M Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, intersected

at 29th Street. Just as he neared the light he saw the GMC take off and knew he had been

spotted. The problem with a bicycle, especially one that had caused a minor uproar

lunging through a red light, was that the cyclist became conspicuous, exactly the opposite

of what was intended.

Making the best of a worsening situation, Bourne threw caution to the wind, following

the accelerating GMC into the fork as it took Pennsylvania Avenue. The good news was

that the congestion prevented the GMC from keeping up speed. More good news:

Another red light loomed. This time Bourne was ready for the GMC to plow right

through. Swerving in and out between vehicles, he put on another burst of speed, running

the red light with the big SUV. But just as he was coming abreast of the far crosswalk, a

gaggle of drunk teenagers stumbled off the curb on their way across the avenue. They

closed off the lane behind the GMC and were so raucous they either didn’t hear Bourne’s

warning shout or didn’t care. He was forced to swerve sharply to the right. His front tire

struck the curb, the bike lifted up. People scattered out of its way as it became, in effect, a missile. Bourne was able to keep it going after it landed, but there was simply nowhere

for him to steer it without plowing into another group of kids. He applied the brakes

without enough effect. Leaning to the right, he forced the bike down on its side, ripping

his right trouser leg as it skidded along the cement.

“Are you all right?”

“What were you trying to do?”

“Didn’t you see the red light?”

“You could have killed yourself-or someone else!”