Текст книги "The Bourne Sanction (Санкция Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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“We can go to my place,” Devra offered. “It’s not far from here.”

Arkadin shook his head. “I think not.”

They walked, seemingly aimlessly, until they came to a small hotel. Arkadin booked a

room. The flyblown night clerk barely looked at them. He was only interested in taking

their money.

The room was mean, barely furnished with a bed, a hard-backed chair, and a dresser

with three legs and a pile of books propping up the fourth corner. A circular threadbare

carpet covered the center of the room. It was stained, pocked with cigarette burns. What

appeared to be a closet was the toilet. The shower and sink were down the hall.

Arkadin went to the window. He’d asked for a room in front, knowing it would be

noisier, but would afford him a bird’s-eye view of anyone coming. The street was

deserted, not a car in sight. Sevastopol glowed in a slow, cold pulse.

“Time,” he said, turning back into the room, “to get some things straight.”

“Now? Can’t this wait?” Devra was lying crosswise on the bed, her feet still on the

floor. “I’m dead on my feet.”

Arkadin considered a moment. It was deep into the night. He was exhausted but not yet

ready for sleep. He kicked off his shoes, lay down on the bed. Devra had to sit up to make

room for him, but instead of lying down parallel to him, she resumed her position, head

on his belly. She closed her eyes.

“I want to come with you,” she said softly, almost as if in sleep.

He was instantly alert. “Why?” he said. “Why would you want to come with me?”

She said nothing in reply; she was asleep.

For a time, he lay listening to her steady breathing. He didn’t know what to do with

her, but she was all he had left of this end of Pyotr’s network. He spent some time

digesting what she had told him about Shumenko, Filya, and Pyotr, looking for holes. It

seemed improbable to him that Pyotr could be so undisciplined, but then again he’d been

betrayed by his girlfriend of the moment, who worked for Icoupov. That spoke of a man

out of control, whose habits could indeed filter down to his subordinates. He had no idea

if Pyotr had daddy issues, but given who his daddy was it certainly wasn’t out of the

question.

This girl was strange. On the surface she was so much like other young girls he’d come

across: hard-edged, cynical, desperate, and despairing. But this one was different. He

could see beneath her armor plating to the little lost girl she once had been and perhaps

still was. He put his hand on the side of her neck, felt the slow pulse of her life. He could be wrong, of course. It could all be a performance put on for his benefit. But for the life of him he’d couldn’t figure out what her angle might be.

And there was something else about her, connected to her fragility, her deliberate

vulnerability. She needed something, he thought, as, in the end, we all did, even those

who fooled themselves into thinking they didn’t. He knew what he needed; it was simply

that he chose not to think about it. She needed a father, that was clear enough. He

couldn’t help suspecting there was something about her he was missing, something she

hadn’t told him but wanted him to find. The answer was already inside him, dancing like

a firefly. But every time he reached out to capture it, it just danced farther away. The

feeling was maddening, as if he’d had sex with a woman without reaching an orgasm.

And then she stirred, and in stirring said his name. It was like a bolt of lightning

illuminating the room. He was back on the rainy rooftop, with Mole-man standing over

him, listening to the conversation between him and Devra.

“He was your responsibility,” Mole-man said, referring to Filya.

Arkadin’s heart beat faster. Your responsibility. Why would Mole-man say that if Filya

was the courier in Sevastopol? As if of their own accord, his fingertips stroked the velvet flesh of Devra’s neck. The crafty little bitch! Filya was a soldier, a guard. She was the

courier in Sevastopol. She’d handed the document off to the next link. She knew where

he had to go next.

Holding her tightly, Arkadin at last let go of the night, the room, the present. On a tide

of elation, he drifted into sleep, into the blood-soaked clutches of his past.

Arkadin would have killed himself, this was certain, had it not been for the

intervention of Semion Icoupov. Arkadin’s best and only friend, Mischa Tarkanian,

concerned for his life, had appealed to the man he worked for. Arkadin remembered with

an eerie clarity the day Icoupov had come to see him. He had walked in, and Arkadin,

half crazed with a will to die, had put a Makarov PM to his head-the same gun he was

going to use to blow his own brains out.

Icoupov, to his credit, didn’t make a move. He stood in the ruins of Arkadin’s Moscow

apartment, not looking at Arkadin at all. Arkadin, in the grip of his sulfurous past, was

unable to make sense of anything. Much later, he understood. In the same way you didn’t

look a bear in the eye, lest he charge you, Icoupov had kept his gaze focused on other

things-the broken picture frames, the smashed crystal, the overturned chairs, the ashes of

the fetishistic fire Arkadin had lit to burn his clothes.

“Mischa tells me you’re having a difficult time.”

“Mischa should keep his mouth shut.”

Icoupov spread his hands. “Someone has to save your life.”

“What d’you know about it?” Arkadin said harshly.

“Actually, I know nothing about what’s happened to you,” Icoupov said.

Arkadin, digging the muzzle of the Makarov into Icoupov’s temple, stepped closer.

“Then shut the fuck up.”

“What I am concerned about is the here and now.” Icoupov didn’t blink an eye; he

didn’t move a muscle, either. “For fuck’s sake, son, look at you. If you won’t pull back

from the brink for yourself, do it for Mischa, who loves you better than any brother

would.”

Arkadin let out a ragged breath, as if he were expelling a dollop of poison. He took the

Makarov from Icoupov’s head.

Icoupov held out his hand. When Arkadin hesitated, he said with great gentleness,

“This isn’t Nizhny Tagil. There is no one here worth hurting, Leonid Danilovich.”

Arkadin gave a curt nod, let go of the gun. Icoupov called out, handed it to one of two

very large men who came down the hallway from the far end where they had been

stationed, not making a sound. Arkadin tensed, angry at himself for not sensing them.

Clearly, they were bodyguards. In his current condition, they could have taken Arkadin

anytime. He looked at Icoupov, who nodded, and an unspoken connection sprang up

between them.

“There is only one path for you now,” Icoupov said.

Icoupov moved to sit on the sofa in Arkadin’s trashed apartment, then gestured, and

the bodyguard who had taken possession of Arkadin’s Makarov held it out to him.

“Here, now, you will have witnesses to your last spasm of nihilism. If you wish it.”

Arkadin for once in his life ignored the gun, stared implacably at Icoupov.

“No?” Icoupov shrugged. “Do you know what I think, Leonid Danilovich? I think it

gives you a measure of comfort to believe that your life has no meaning. Most times you

revel in this belief; it’s what fuels you. But there are times, like now, when it takes you by the throat and shakes you till your teeth rattle in your skull.” He was dressed in dark

slacks, an oyster-gray shirt, a long black leather coat that made him look somewhat

sinister, like a German SS-Stьrmbannfьhrer. “But I believe to the contrary that you are

searching for the meaning of your life.” His dark skin shone like polished bronze. He

gave the appearance of a man who knew what he was doing, someone, above all, not to

be trifled with.

“What path?” Arkadin said dully, taking a seat on the sofa.

Icoupov gestured with both hands, encompassing the self-inflicted whirlwind that had

torn apart the rooms. “The past for you is dead, Leonid Danilovich, do you not agree?”

“God has punished me. God has abandoned me,” Arkadin said, regurgitating by rote a

lament of his mother’s.

Icoupov smiled a perfectly innocent smile, one that could not possibly be

misinterpreted. He had an uncanny ability to engage others one-on-one. “And what God

is that?”

Arkadin had no answer because this God he spoke of was his mother’s God, the God

of his childhood, the God that had remained an enigma to him, a shadow, a God of bile,

of rage, of split bone and spilt blood.

“But no,” he said, “God, like heaven, is a word on a page. Hell is the here and now.”

Icoupov shook his head. “You have never known God, Leonid Danilovich. Put

yourself in my hands. With me, you will find God, and learn the future he has planned for

you.”

“I cannot be alone.” Arkadin realized that this was the truest thing he’d ever said.

“Nor shall you be.”

Icoupov turned to accept a tray from one of the bodyguards. While they had been

talking, he’d made tea. Icoupov poured two glasses full, added sugar, handed one to

Arkadin.

“Drink with me now, Leonid Danilovich,” he said as he lifted his steaming glass. “To

your recovery, to your health, to the future, which will be as bright for you as you wish to make it.”

The two men sipped their tea, which the bodyguard had astutely fortified with a

considerable amount of vodka.

“To never being alone again,” said Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.

That was a long time ago, at a way station on a river that had turned to blood. Was he

much changed from the near-insane man who had put the muzzle of a gun to Semion

Icoupov’s head? Who could say? But on days of heavy rain, ominous thunder, and

twilight at noon, when the world looked as bleak as he knew it to be, thoughts of his past

surfaced like corpses in a river, regurgitated by his memory. And he would be alone

again.

Tarkanian was coming around, but the phenothiazine that had been administered to

him was doing its job, sedating him mildly and impairing his mental functioning enough

so that when Bourne bent over him and said in Russian, “Bourne’s dead, we’re in the

process of extracting you,” Tarkanian dazedly thought he was one of the men at the

reptile house.

“Icoupov sent you.” Tarkanian lifted a hand, felt the bandage the paramedics had used

to keep light out of his eyes. “Why can’t I see?”

“Lie still,” Bourne said softly. “There are civilians around. Paramedics. That’s how

we’re extracting you. You’ll be safe in the hospital for a few hours while we arrange the

rest of your travel.”

Tarkanian nodded.

“Icoupov is on the move,” Bourne whispered. “Do you know where?”

“No.”

“He wants you to be most comfortable during your debriefing. Where should we take

you?”

“Moscow, of course.” Tarkanian licked his lips. “It’s been years since I’ve been home.

I have an apartment on the Frunzenskaya embankment.” More and more he seemed to be

speaking to himself. “From my living room window you can see the pedestrian bridge to

Gorky Park. Such a peaceful setting. I haven’t seen it in so long.”

They arrived at the hospital before Bourne had a chance to continue the interrogation.

Then everything happened very quickly. The doors banged open and the paramedic leapt

into action, getting the gurney down, rushing it through the automatic glass doors into a

corridor leading to the ER. The place was packed with patients. One of the paramedics

was talking to a harried overworked intern, who directed him to a small room, one of

many off the corridor. Bourne saw that the other rooms were filled.

The two paramedics rolled Tarkanian into the room, checked the IV, took his vitals

again, unhooked him.

“He’ll come around in a minute,” one of them said. “Someone will be in shortly to see

to him.” He produced a practiced smile that was not unlikable. “Don’t worry, your

friend’s going to be fine.”

After they’d left, Bourne went back to Tarkanian, said, “Mikhail, I know the

Frunzenskaya embankment well. Where exactly is your apartment?”

“He’s not going to tell you.”

Bourne whirled just as the first gunman-the one he’d wrapped the python around-threw

himself on top of him. Bourne staggered back, bounced hard against the wall. He struck

at the gunman’s face. The gunman blocked it, punched Bourne hard on the point of his

sternum. Bourne grunted, and the gunman followed up with a short chop to Bourne’s

side.

Down on one knee, Bourne saw him pull out a knife, swipe the blade at him. Bourne

shrank back. The gunman attacked with the knife point-first. Bourne landed a hard right

flush on his face, heard the satisfying crack of the cheekbone fracturing. Enraged, the

gunman closed, the blade swinging through Bourne’s shirt, bringing out an arc of blood

like beads on a string.

Bourne hit him so hard he staggered back, struck the gurney on which Tarkanian was

stirring out of his drugged stupor. The man took out his handgun with the suppressor.

Bourne closed with him, grabbing him tightly, depriving him of space to aim the gun.

Tarkanian ripped off the bandage the paramedics had used to keep light out of his eyes,

blinked heavily, looking around. “What the hell’s going on?” he said drowsily to the

gunman. “You told me Bourne was dead.”

The man was too busy fending off Bourne’s attack to answer. Seeing his firearm was

of no use to him he dropped it, kicked it along the floor. He tried to get the knife blade

inside Bourne’s defense, but Bourne broke the attacks, not fooled by the feints the

gunman used to distract him.

Tarkanian sat up, slid off the gurney. He found it difficult to talk, so he slipped to his

knees, crawled across the cool linoleum to where the gun lay.

The gunman, one hand gripping Bourne’s neck, was working the knife free, prepared

to stab downward into Bourne’s stomach.

“Move away from him.” Tarkanian was aiming the gun at the two men. “I’ll have a

clear shot.”

The gunman heard him, shoved the heel of his hand into Bourne’s Adam’s apple,

choking him. Then he moved his upper body to one side.

Just as Tarkanian was about to squeeze the trigger Bourne rabbit-punched the gunman

in the kidney. He groaned and Bourne hauled him between himself and Tarkanian. A

coughing sound announced the bullet plowing into the gunman’s chest.

Tarkanian cursed, moved to get Bourne back in his sights. As he did so, Bourne

wrested the knife away from the gunman’s limp hand, threw it with deadly accuracy. The

force of it lifted Tarkanian backward off his feet. Bourne pushed the gunman away from

him, crossed the room to where Tarkanian lay in a pool of his own blood. The knife was

buried to the hilt in his chest. By its position, Bourne knew it had pierced a lung. Within moments Tarkanian would drown in his own blood.

Tarkanian stared up at Bourne. He laughed even as he said, “Now you’re a dead man.”

Ten

ROB BATT made his arrangements through General Kendall, LaValle’s second in

command. Through him, Batt was able to access certain black-ops assets in the NSA. No

congressional oversight, no fuss, no muss. As far as the federal government was

concerned, these people didn’t exist, except as auxiliary staff seconded to the Pentagon;

they were thought to be pushing papers in a windowless office somewhere in the bowels

of the building.

Now, this is the way the clandestine services should run, Batt said to himself as he laid

out the operation for the eight young men ranged in a semicircle in a Pentagon briefing

room Kendall had provided for him. No supervision, no snooping congressional

committees to report to.

The plan was simple, as all his plans tended to be. Other people might like bells and

whistles, but not Batt. Vanilla, Kendall had called it. But the more that was involved, the more that could go wrong was how he looked at it. Also, no one fucked up simple plans;

they could be put together and executed in a matter of hours, if need be, even with new

personnel. But the fact was he liked these NSA agents, perhaps because they were

military men. They were quick to catch on, quicker even to learn. He never had to repeat

himself. To a man, they seemed to memorize everything as it was presented to them.

Better still, because of their military background, they obeyed orders unquestioningly,

unlike agents in CI-Soraya Moore a case in point-who always thought they knew a better

way to get things done. Plus, these bad boys weren’t afraid of rendition; they weren’t

afraid to pull the trigger. If given the appropriate order they’d kill a target without either question or regret.

Batt felt a certain exhilaration at the knowledge that no one was looking over his

shoulder, that he wouldn’t have to explain himself to anyone-not even the new DCI. He’d

entered an altogether different arena, one all his own, where he could make decisions of

great moment, devise field operations, and carry them out with the confidence that he

would be backed to the hilt, that no operation would ever boomerang on him, bring him

face-to-face with a congressional committee and disgrace. As he wrapped up the pre-

mission briefing, his cheeks were flushed, his pulse accelerated. There was a heat

building inside him that could almost be called arousal.

He tried not to think of his conversation with the defense secretary, tried not to think of Luther LaValle heading up Typhon while he looked helplessly on. He desperately didn’t

want to give up control of such a powerful weapon against terrorism, but Halliday hadn’t

given him a choice.

One step at a time. If there was a way to foil Halliday and LaValle, he was confident

he’d find it. But for the moment, he returned his attention to the job at hand. No one was

going to fuck up his plan to capture Jason Bourne. He knew this absolutely. Within hours

Bourne would be in custody, down so deep even a Houdini like him would never get out.

Soraya Moore made her way to Veronica Hart’s office. Two men were emerging: Dick

Symes, the chief of intelligence, and Rodney Feir, chief of field support. Symes was a

short, round man whose red face appeared to have been applied directly to his shoulders.

Feir, several years Symes’s junior, was fair-haired, with an athletic body, an expression

as closed as a bank vault.

Both men greeted her cordially, but there was a repellent condescension to Symes’s

smile.

“Bearding the lioness in her den?” Feir said.

“Is she in a bad mood?” Soraya asked.

Feir shrugged. “Too soon to tell.”

“We’re waiting to see if she can carry the weight of the world on those delicate

shoulders,” Symes said. “Just like with you, Director.”

Soraya forced a smile though her clenched jaws. “You gentlemen are too kind.”

Feir laughed. “Ready, willing, and able to oblige, ma’am.”

Soraya watched them leave, two peas in a pod. Then she poked her head into the DCI’s

inner sanctum. Unlike her predecessor, Veronica Hart maintained an open-door policy

when it came to her upper-echelon staff. It engendered a sense of trust and camaraderie

that-as she’d told Soraya-had been sorely lacking at CI in the past. In fact, from the vast amount of electronic data she’d pored over the last couple of days it was becoming

increasing clear to her that the previous DCI’s bunker mentality had led to an atmosphere

of cynicism and alienation among the directorate heads. The Old Man came from the

school of letting the Seven vie with one another, complete with duplicity, backstabbing,

and, so far as she was concerned, outright objectionable behavior.

Hart was a product of a new era, where the primary watchword was cooperation. The

events of 2001 had proved that when it came to the intelligence services, competition was

deadly. So far as Soraya was concerned that was all to the good.

“How long have you been at this?” Soraya asked.

Hart glanced out the window. “It’s morning already? I ordered Rob home hours ago.”

“Way past morning.” Soraya smiled. “How about lunch? You definitely need to get out

of this office.”

She spread her hands to indicate the queue of dossiers loaded onto her computer. “Too

much work-”

“It won’t get done if you pass out from hunger and dehydration.”

“Okay, the canteen-”

“It’s such a fine day, I was thinking of walking to a favorite restaurant of mine.”

Hearing a warning note in Soraya’s otherwise light voice, Hart looked up. Yes, there

was definitely something her director of Typhon wanted to talk to her about outside the

confines of the CI building.

Hart nodded. “All right. I’ll get my coat.”

Soraya took out her new cell, which she’d picked up at CI this morning. She’d found

her old one in the gutter by her car at the Moira Trevor surveillance site, had disposed of it at the office. Now she texted a message.

A moment later Hart’s cell buzzed. The text from Soraya read: VAN X ST. Van across

the street.

Hart folded her cell away and launched into a long story at the end of which both

women laughed. Then they talked about shoes versus boots, leather versus suede, and

which Jimmy Choos they’d buy if they were ever paid enough.

Both women kept an eye on the van without seeming to look at it. Soraya directed

them down a side street where the van couldn’t go for fear of becoming conspicuous.

They were moving out of the range of its electronics.

“You came from the private sector,” Soraya said. “What I don’t understand is why

you’d give up that payday to become DCI. It’s such a thankless job.”

“Why did you agree to be director of Typhon?” Hart asked.

“It was a huge step up for me, both in prestige and in pay.”

“But that’s not really why you accepted it, was it?”

Soraya shook her head. “No. I felt a strong sense of obligation to Martin Lindros. I was

in at the beginning. Because I’m half Arab, Martin sought out my input both in the

creation of Typhon and in its recruitment. He meant Typhon to be a very different

intelligence-gathering organization, staffed with people who understood both the Arab

and the Muslim mind-set. He felt-and I wholeheartedly agree-that the only way to

successfully combat the wide array of extremist terrorist cells was to understand what

motivates them. Once you were in sync with their motivation, you could begin to

anticipate their actions.”

Hart nodded, her long face in a neutral set as she sank deeper in thought. “My own

motivations were similar to yours. I grew sick of the cynical attitude of the private

security firms. All of them, not just Black River where I worked, were focused on how

much money they could milk out of the mess in the Middle East. In times of war, the

government is a mighty cash cow, throwing newly minted money at every situation, as if

that alone will make a difference. But the fact is, everyone involved has a license to

plunder and steal to their heart’s content. What happens in Iraq stays in Iraq. No one’s

going prosecute them. They’re indemnified against retribution for profiting from other

people’s misery.”

Soraya took them into a clothes store, where they made a pretense of checking out

camisoles to cover the seriousness of the conversation.

“I came to CI because I couldn’t change Black River, but I felt I could make a

difference here. The president gave me a mandate to change an organization that was in

disarray, that long ago had lost its way.”

They went out the back, across the street, hurrying now, down the block, turning left

for a block, then right for two blocks, left again. They went into a large restaurant boiling with people. Perfect. The high level of ambient noise, the multiple crosscurrents of

conversations would make their own conversation undetectable.

At Hart’s request they were seated at a table near the rear where they had excellent

sight lines of the interior as well as the front door. Everyone who came in would be

visually vetted by them.

“Well executed,” Hart said when they were seated. “I see you’ve done this before.”

“There were times-especially when I was working with Jason Bourne -when I was

obliged to lose a CI tail or two.”

Hart scanned the large menu. “Do you think that was a CI van?”

“No.”

Hart looked at Soraya over the menu. “Neither do I.”

They ordered brook trout, Caesar salads to start, mineral water to drink. They took

turns checking out the people who came into the restaurant.

Halfway through the salads Soraya said, “We’ve intercepted some unconventional

chatter in the last couple of days. I don’t think alarming would be a too strong a word.”

Hart put down her fork. “How so?”

“It seems possible that a new attack on American soil is in its final stages.”

Hart’s demeanor changed instantly. She was clearly shaken. “What the hell are we

doing here?” she said angrily. “Why aren’t we in the office where I can mobilize the

forces?”

“Wait until you hear the whole story.” Soraya said. “Remember that the lines and

frequencies Typhon monitors are almost all overseas, so unlike the chatter other

intelligence agencies scan, ours is more concentrated, but from what I’ve seen it’s also far more accurate. As you know, there’s always an enormous amount of disinformation in

the regular chatter. Not so with the terrorists we keep an ear on. Of course, we’re

checking and rechecking the accuracy of this intel, but until proven otherwise we’re

going on the assumption that it’s real. We have two problems, however, which is why

mobilizing CI now isn’t the wisest course.”

Three women came in, chatting animatedly. The manager greeted them like old

friends, showed them to a round table near the window, where they settled in.

“First, we have an immediate time frame, that is to say within a week, ten days at the

outside. However, we have almost nothing on the target, except from the intercepts we

know it’s large and complex, so we’re thinking a building. Again, because of our Muslim

expertise we believe it will be a structure of both economic and symbolic importance.”

“But no specific location?”

“East Coast, most probably New York.”

“Nothing’s crossed my desk, which means none of our sister agencies has a clue about

this intel.”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Soraya said. “This is ours alone. Typhon’s. This is why

we were created.”

“You haven’t yet told me why I shouldn’t inform Homeland Security and mobilize

CI.”

“Because the source of this intel is entirely new. Do you seriously think HS or NSA

would take our intel at its face value? They’d need corroboration-and A, they wouldn’t

get it from their own sources, and, B, their mucking about in the bush would jeopardize

the inroads we’ve made.”

“You’re right about that,” Hart said. “They’re about as subtle as an elephant in

Manhattan.”

Soraya hunched forward. “The point is the group planning the attack is unknown to us.

That means we don’t know their motivation, their mind-set, their methodology.”

Two men came in, one after the other. They were dressed as civilians, but their military

bearing gave them away. They were seated at separate tables on opposite sides of the

restaurant.

“NSA,” Hart said.

Soraya frowned. “Why would NSA be shadowing us?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Let’s continue with what’s most immediately pressing. You

mean we’re dealing with a complete unknown, an unaffiliated terrorist organization that

is capable of planning a large-scale attack? That sounds far-fetched.”

“Imagine how it’ll sound to your directorate heads. Plus, our operatives have

determined that keeping our information secret is the only way to get more intel. The

moment this group catches wind of our mobilizing they’ll postpone the operation for

another time.”

“Assuming the current time frame is correct, could they abort or postpone at this late

stage?”

“We couldn’t, that’s for sure.” Soraya gave her a sardonic smile. “But terrorist

networks have no infrastructure or bureaucracy to slow them down, so who knows? Part

of the difficulty in locating them and taking them down is their infinite flexibility. This superior methodology is what Martin wanted for Typhon. That’s my mandate.”

The waiter took their half-eaten salads away. A moment later, their main courses

arrived. Hart asked for another bottle of mineral water. Her mouth was dry. Now she had

NSA on one side, an off-the-grid terrorist organization about to carry out an attack on a

large East Coast building on the other. Scylla and Charybdis. Either one could wreck her

career at CI before it even began. She couldn’t allow that to happen. She wouldn’t.

“Excuse me a moment,” she said, getting up.

Soraya scanned the restaurant, but kept at least one of the agents in her peripheral

vision. She saw him tense when the DCI went off to the ladies’ room. He had risen and

was making his way toward the rear when Hart returned. He reversed course, sat back

down.

When the DCI had settled herself in her chair she looked Soraya in the eye. “Since you

decided to deliver this intel here instead of the office I assume you have a specific idea as to how to proceed.”

“Listen,” Soraya said, “we have a red-hot situation, and we don’t have enough intel to

mobilize, let alone act. We have less than a week to find out everything on this terrorist

organization based God only knows where with who knows how many members.

“This isn’t the time or place for the usual protocols. They’re not going to avail us

anything.” She glanced down at her fish as if it were the last thing she wanted to put in

her mouth. When her gaze rose again, she said, “We need Jason Bourne to find this

terrorist group. We’ll take care of the rest.”

Hart looked at her as if she were out of her mind. “Out of the question.”

“Given the urgency of the mission,” Soraya said, “he’s the only one who has a chance

of finding them and stopping them.”

“I wouldn’t last a day in the job once it got out that I was using Jason Bourne.”

“On the other hand,” Soraya said, “if you don’t follow through on this intel, if this

group executes their attack, you’ll be out of CI before you can catch your breath.”

Hart sat back, produced a short laugh. “You really are a piece of work. You want me to

authorize the use of a rogue agent-a man who’s unstable at best, who many powerful

people in this organization feel is dangerous to CI in particular-for a mission that could

have dire consequences for this country, for the continuation of CI as you and I know it?”

A jolt of anxiety ran down Soraya’s spine. “Wait a minute, back that up. What do you

mean the continuation of CI as we know it?”

Hart glanced from one of the NSA agents to the other. Then she expelled a deep breath