Текст книги "The Bourne Deception (Обман Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Bourne, his consciousness wavering, crawled away, as if seeking safety beneath the conference table. Bat-man grunted with each blow he delivered, rising up as he swung the heavy butt down again and again.

Bourne, feeling consciousness slipping further and further away into a red haze of agony, crawled the few more inches he needed to grab Tracy‘s ceramic gun, which was lying on the floor. With grim determination, he pointed it up at Bat-man and shot him point-blank in the face.

The air was filled with a storm of blood, bone, and bits of pink brain matter. Bat-man had reared up to deliver another titanic blow, but the force of the bullet arched his head and torso back and away. Then Bourne heard, as if through a ton of cotton wool, what sounded like a sack of wet cement hitting the floor.

For a moment, he lay on his back, one leg raised, his heart pumping like a sprinter‘s at the finish line. Pain suffused him, radiating out from the bullet wound he‘d sustained in Bali. His violent actions and the beating he had taken had a deleterious effect on his healing, just as Dr. Firth had warned. Just like after the second surgery, he felt like he‘d been struck by a speeding train.

Then he breathed, and heard his blood singing the song of life in his inner ears. And then came the fiery touch of Shiva, removing the chill of death from his bones, as if this spirit—or, as Suparwita believed, god—had protected him once again, extending his strong hand to take Bourne‘s and bring him back fully into the land of the living.

All at once, hearing conflicting rounds of semi-automatic fire coming from the hallway, he twitched, stirred, and, rising on one elbow, groaned deeply. His head was swimming and he seemed afloat in blood—not his blood, Bat-man‘s, dead as yesterday‘s news, faceless, all but unrecognizable.

It was then, amid the semi-automatic fire that seemed both closer and more frenzied, that he looked around for Tracy. She was lying on her side beyond the table.

―Tracy,‖ he said, and then more urgently, ―Tracy!‖

Her right arm moved in response. He crawled painfully under the table, across the floor glittering with knife-like glass shards that tore into the heels of his hands and his shins.

―Tracy.‖

Her eyes stared straight ahead, but as he rose up into her field of vision, her eyes tracked him and a small smile lit her face.

―There you are.‖

He reached down, putting one arm beneath her shoulders, but when he moved to pick her up, her face contorted and she cried out.

―Oh, God—God help me!‖

―What is it? What‘s the matter?‖

She stared at him mutely, a web of pain clouding her eyes.

He lifted her torso as gently as he could, and that was when he saw the two large shards of glass sticking out of her back like dagger blades. Wiping the sweat off her brow, he said, ―Tracy, I want you to move your feet. Can you do that for me?‖

He looked at her feet, but nothing happened.

―What about your legs?‖

Nothing. He pinched the flesh of her thigh. ―Do you feel that?‖

―What… what did you do?‖

She was paralyzed. At least one of the glass spears had severed key nerves. And the other one? He moved, trying to get a better look at how deeply the glass was embedded. These were good-size pieces, six to eight inches long, he judged, and they were buried deep. He recalled Tracy turning away, then the bullet from Yevsen‘s gun slamming into the heavy glass bowl.

The impact had acted like the detonation of a nail bomb, impaling her on two of the larger projectiles.

The thunder of the semi-automatic fire was very close now, though more intermittent.

―I‘ve got to get you to a hospital,‖ Bourne said, but as he tried to lever her from her half-sitting position she vomited a gout of blood, and he eased back, cradling her in his arms.

―I‘m not going anywhere.‖

―I‘m not going to let you—‖

―You know it and I know it.‖ Tracy‘s eyes were bloodshot, cratered with dark circles like deep bruises. ―I don‘t want to be alone, Jason.‖

He held her as she relaxed back against him. ―Why did you call me that?‖

―Yes, I know your real name, I have from the moment I met you, which wasn‘t a coincidence. Keep still,‖ she said, cutting him off, ―I have things to tell you and there isn‘t much time.‖ She licked her bloody lips. ―Arkadin hired me to make sure you got here. Nikolai Yevsen, the man you just killed, told me that Arkadin is in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, why I don‘t know, but he isn‘t here.‖

So she‘d been working for Arkadin all along. Bourne shook his head grimly at how well he‘d been played. He‘d been made to suspect her and then been given a perfectly plausible explanation as to why she‘d lied about knowing the Goya was real. At that, he‘d stupidly let down his guard. He saw Arkadin‘s hand in these delicate threads and admiration mingled with his anger at himself.

Tracy‘s eyes suddenly opened so wide he could see the bloodshot whites all the way around. ―Jason!‖

Her breathing had become shallow and erratic. She tried to smile. ―It‘s in our darkest hour that our secrets eat us alive.‖

He put two fingers against her carotid. Her pulse was weak and irregular.

She was slipping away. All at once their conversation of last night came back to him—‖ Why is it, I wonder, that people feel the need to lie altogether?”

she had said—and he knew absolutely that she had wanted to tell him then.

“Would it be so terrible if everyone just told each other the truth?”Their entire conversation had been about her double life, and her inability to confess it to him. “What about you?”she had said. “Do you mind being alone?”

He struggled to understand the situation—to understand her—but all human beings were too complicated to be summed up by one thought, or even one string of thoughts. Once again, he was struck by all the myriad strands that went into the weave of a human life—Tracy‘s no less than anyone else‘s—

perhaps more so in her case because, like him, she lived a double life. Like Don Hererra and the Torturer, she had been part of Arkadin‘s spider‘s web, an attempt to manipulate him into doing—what? He still didn‘t know. But here was one of his enemy‘s pawns, lying still and dying in his arms. It was obvious now—and, in retrospect, last night—that she felt conflicted about the role Arkadin had hired her to play. Her ambivalence struck him like a blow to his stomach. She had fooled him but, as she had wondered last night, had she in the process been fooling herself? These were questions that went to the heart of his own dilemma: the not-knowing, the always being on the verge of another identity and, in consequence, losing the people around him. Death was always and ever around him, the other side of Shiva, who was the destroyer as well as the harbinger of resurrection.

All at once Tracy gave a great shiver in his arms, as if she were exhaling for the last time. ―Jason, I don‘t want to be alone.‖

Her plaintive words thawed his icy heart. ―You‘re not alone, Tracy.‖ He bent over her, his lips touching her forehead. ―I‘m here with you.‖

―Yes, I know, it‘s good, I feel you around me.‖ She gave a sigh, akin to a cat‘s purr of contentment.

―Tracy?‖ He took his lips away so he could look into her eyes, which were fixed, staring at infinity. ―Tracy.‖

29

IT‘S COMING THROUGH!‖ Humphry Bamber said.

―How much of it?‖ Moira asked.

Bamber watched the numbers scrolling across his screen as the download bar registered the illicit transfer from Noah Perlis‘s laptop.

―All of it,‖ he said as the green bar reached the 100 percent level. ―Now to get under the hood and see what‘s going on.‖

Her adrenaline was running high, and she lost patience with the minutes ticking off, pacing around the perimeter of his work space, which smelled of hot metal and spinning hard drives, the scent of money in the twenty-first century. The room was in the rear of the office, its dusky north light forming wan pools in between the shadows thrown by the stacks of electronic equipment, whose fans and motors whirred and hummed like a menagerie. The only two spaces on the walls not filled with instruments or shelves overloaded with computer peripherals, containers of blank DVDs, and USB and power cords of all lengths and descriptions, were taken up by a window and a framed photograph of Bamber at college in full football gear down in a three-point stance. He was even more handsome then than he was now.

When Moira‘s circuit of the room took her past the window, she paused, staring out across the street onto which the building backed. In the facing building, fluorescent lights were on, revealing an office filled with filing cabinets, hulking Xerox machines, and identical desks. Middle-aged people rushed back and forth, clutching files or reports the way a drowning man clutches a piece of driftwood. On the floor above that living death, she saw through high loft windows into an artist‘s atelier, where a young woman was throwing paint onto a massive canvas propped against a dead-white wall. Her concentration was so intense, lost within the vision she was trying to reproduce, that she appeared unaware of her surroundings.

―How are you coming?‖ Moira asked as she turned back into the room.

Bamber, concentrating as intensely as the artist across the street, needed a bit of prompting to answer. ―A few more minutes and I‘ll know,‖ he mumbled at last.

Moira nodded. She was about to continue her anxious perambulation when a sudden movement brought her attention back to the street. A car had drawn up near the end of the block and a man had emerged. Something about the way he moved set off alarm bells in her head. He had a way of turning his head in minute increments, as if he was looking at everything and nothing, that made the hair stir at the nape of her neck. When he reached Bamber‘s building, he stopped. Keeping close to the rear door, he took out a set of picks and inserted one, then another in the lock, until he found the right one to simulate the hills and valleys of the key.

Reaching down, Moira drew her Lady Hawk out of its thigh holster.

―Almost done!‖ There was a defiant note of triumph in Bamber‘s voice.

The door opened and the man entered the building.

Noah Perlis seems to be the nexus of this crisis,‖ Peter Marks said. ―He engineered Jay Weston‘s death, he pulled the rug out from under the Metro police, and he‘s infiltrated Moira‘s new organization and got her on the run.‖

―Noah is Black River,‖ Willard said. ―And as secretive and powerful as that band of mercenaries is, I very much doubt that even they have the muscle to accomplish all that without questions being asked.‖

―You don‘t think Perlis is behind this?‖

―I didn‘t say that.‖ Willard rubbed the stubble on his cheek. ―But in this case I have to believe that Black River had major help.‖

The two men were facing each other in a brown tufted Naugahyde booth in a late-night bar, listening to a mournful Tammy Wynette song on the jukebox and the insistent growl of garbage trucks rumbling past. A couple of skinny whores were dancing together, having given up on the night. An old man with a shock of unruly white hair was on a stool, bent over his drink; another, who‘d put the dollar in the juke, was dueting with Tammy in a passable Irish tenor, tears in his eyes. The smell of old booze and older despair clung to every bit of run-down furniture in the place. The bartender, one foot on the inside rail, was peering over his belly to read a newspaper with all the enthusiasm of a stoned student cracking open a textbook.

―From what I‘ve gleaned,‖ Willard continued, ―Black River‘s major client now is the NSA, in the person of the secretary of defense, who has been championing them to the president.‖

Marks fairly goggled. ―How d‘you know all this?‖

Willard smiled as he rolled his shot glass between his fingers. ―Let‘s just say that being a mole inside the NSA safe house for all these years gives me a couple of legs up—even on the likes of you, Peter.‖ He slid out of the banquette, went past the two whores, who both blew him a kiss. The juke was now playing Don Henley‘s ―The Boys of Summer,‖ which appeared to make the Irish tenor weep all the harder as he sang along.

When Willard returned to the banquette it was with a bottle of single-malt. He filled his shot glass and topped off Marks‘s. ―Before we go any further,‖ he said, ―I‘m wondering why you haven‘t reported our startling information regarding Noah Perlis and Black River to the Arab.‖

―M. Errol Danziger is the new DCI,‖ Marks said thoughtfully, ―but I‘m not sure I want to report anything to him, especially if the NSA is involved.

He‘s Secretary Halliday‘s man through and through.‖

Willard took a sip of his single-malt. ―So what are you going to do?

Quit?‖

Marks shook his head. ―I love CI too much. It‘s my life.‖ He inclined his head. ―I‘d ask the same of you: Are you going to quit?‖

―Indeed not.‖ Willard threw down some more whisky. ―But I do plan to go my own way.‖

Marks shook his head. ―I‘m not following you.‖

Something had surfaced on Willard‘s face, a certain contemplative air, or perhaps his innate secretiveness was battling with an urge to recruit, because he said, ―Did you know Alex Conklin?‖

―No one knew Conklin—not really.‖

―I did. I don‘t say that as a boast, just hard fact. Alex and I worked together. I knew what he was building with Treadstone. I‘m not certain I approved then, but I was much younger. I hadn‘t experienced the things Alex had. In any case, he confided all of Treadstone‘s secrets to me.‖

―I thought the Treadstone files were destroyed.‖

Willard nodded. ―The ones the Old Man didn‘t shred, Alex did. Or that was his story, anyway.‖

Marks considered this for a moment. ―Are you saying the Tread-stone files still exist?‖

―Alex, being Alex, had prepared a duplicate set of files. Only two people know where the files are stored, and one of them is dead.‖

Marks downed his single-malt then sat back, regarding Willard with care.

–You want to reboot Treadstone?‖

Willard refilled their glasses from the bottle. ―It‘s already rebooted, Peter. I want to know whether you want to become part of Treadstone.‖

They‘ve been here no more than forty-eight hours, possibly as little as twenty-four.‖ Yusef, Soraya‘s agent in place in Khartoum, was a small man with skin the color of thoroughly cured leather. He had large, liquid eyes and very small ears, but he heard everything. He was one of Typhon‘s top agents because he was clever and resourceful enough to make use of the youth underground that had energized the city through its connection to the Internet. ―It‘s the quicklime, you see. Whoever dumped them wanted them completely destroyed in a way that even fire couldn‘t accomplish, because the quicklime will eat away everything, including bone and teeth, that could be used to ID the remains.‖

Soraya had made contact with Yusef on the way in from the airport and, at Amun Chalthoum‘s urging, had set up a meet with him, despite the men following them—actually because of them. ―These men have been sent by my enemies,‖ Amun had said to her in the car. ―I want them close enough so we can grab them.‖

Yusef had heard about the dead men from a young boy who‘d come across the grave while he and some friends were exploring the Ansar forts near Sabaloga Gorge; the forts had once been used to attack the troopships on their way to relieve the British General Gordon and his exhausted men in 1885. The young boy and his friend lived in the adjacent village, but a network of kids in Khartoum soon learned of the discovery of the bodies in their Internet chat room.

After handing them a pair of Glocks and extra ammunition, Yusef had led the way about fifty miles north, through the desert with its harsh winds and brutal sun. They used two four-wheel-drive vehicles, as Yusef had advised, because the rough roads and the unreliability of Sudanese vehicles made traveling in just one foolhardy.

―You see how much of the men is left,‖ Yusef said now, as they stared into the shallow pit that had been hastily dug in the packed-earth floor inside one of the old crumbling forts, ―despite the quicklime.‖

Soraya waved away a cloud of flies as she crouched down. ―Enough to see they‘ve all been shot in the back of the head.‖ Her nose wrinkled. At least the quicklime had taken care of the stench of rotting bodies.

―Execution, military-style,‖ Chalthoum said. ―But are we certain these four men are the ones we‘re after?‖

―They‘re the ones, all right,‖ Soraya said. ―The decomposition is still minimal. I recognize beef-fed men from the heartland of America when I see them.‖ She looked up at Amun. ―There‘s only one reason for Americans being executed military-style in Khartoum and brought here.‖

Chalthoum nodded. ―To sew up a major loose end.‖

At that moment Yusef, responding to the vibrating ring of his cell, put the phone to his ear, then snapped it shut. ―My lookout says your company‘s here,‖ he told them.

Bourne looked up as a familiar figure filled the doorway. The man with the dark, forbidding caterpillar eyebrows was holding an AK-47 and wearing a Kevlar vest. He stared at the figure of Bat-man sprawled on the floor.

―Nikolai, you cocksucker,‖ he said in guttural Russian, ―who the fuck killed you before I could bring you back to Mother Russia? Now I have been deprived of the pleasure of making you sing your head off.‖

Then, seeing Bourne, he stopped dead in his tracks.

―Jason!‖ Colonel Boris Karpov bellowed like a Russian ox. ―I should have known you‘d be at the heart of this bloody maze.‖

His gaze moved downward, taking in the blood-soaked form of the young woman cradled in Bourne‘s arms. At once, he yelled for a medic.

―It‘s too late for her, Boris,‖ Bourne said in a deadened voice.

Karpov came across the room and knelt beside Bourne. His blunt fingers moved delicately over the shards of glass embedded in Tracy‘s back.

―What a terrible way to die.‖

―They‘re all terrible, Boris.‖

Karpov handed Bourne a hip flask. ―Too true.‖

The medic from Boris‘s assault team, also in riot gear, showed up out of breath. He went to Tracy, tried to find a pulse, and shook his head sadly.

―Casualties?‖ Karpov asked, without taking his eyes off Bourne.

―One dead, two wounded, not seriously.‖

―Who died?‖

―Milinkov.‖

Karpov nodded. ―Tragic, but the building is secured.‖

Bourne felt the fire of the slivovitz all the way down to his stomach.

The growing warmth felt good, as if he‘d regained solid footing.

―Boris,‖ he said softly, ―have your man take Tracy. I don‘t want to leave her.‖

―Of course.‖ Karpov signaled to the medic, who lifted Tracy from Bourne‘s lap.

Bourne watched her as she was carried out of the conference room. He felt her loss, her struggle to come to terms with her duplicitous life and her sense of isolation, living half in the shadows of a world most people were unaware of, let alone able to understand. Her struggle was his struggle, and the pain she felt because of her life was one with which he was all too familiar. He didn‘t want to see her go, didn‘t want to let go of her, as if a part of him, suddenly found, had been ripped away just as abruptly.

―What is this?‖ Boris said, holding up the painting.

―It‘s a Goya, a previously unknown work of the famous Black Paintings series, which makes it virtually priceless.‖

Boris grinned. ―I hope you don‘t covet this, Jason.‖

―To the victor belong the spoils, Boris. So Yevsen was your mission in Khartoum.‖

Karpov nodded. ―I‘ve been working in North Africa for months now, trying to track down Nikolai Yevsen‘s arms-smuggling suppliers, clients, and pipeline. And you?‖

―I spoke to Ivan Volkin—‖

―Yes, he told me. That old man has a soft spot for you.‖

―When Arkadin discovered that his attempt on my life had failed, he came up with another plan, which was to get me here. Why, I don‘t know.‖

With a quick glance over to the corpse lying on the other side of the room, Karpov said, ―It‘s a mystery, one of many here. We were hoping to find both Yevsen‘s supplier and client list, but the hard drives on his remote servers appear to have been wiped clean.‖

―It wasn‘t Yevsen who did it,‖ Bourne said. He rose, and Boris with him.

–He was here with Tracy, he had no idea about your raid.‖

Boris scratched his head. ―Why would Arkadin send you here, especially in the company of that beautiful young woman?‖

―Pity we can‘t ask Yevsen,‖ Bourne said. ―Which begs the question: Who wiped Yevsen‘s servers clean? Someone made off with his entire network. It had to have been one of Yevsen‘s own men—someone high up who had the access codes to the servers.‖

―Anyone who ever dared move against Nikolai Yevsen wound up disappeared.‖

―As long as he was alive.‖ Bourne, whose mind finally had identified enough of the silken strands to make sense of the spider‘s web, tilted his head and beckoned Karpov to walk with him. ―But look at him now, he isn‘t a danger to anyone, including Arkadin.‖

Boris‘s countenance grew dark. ―Arkadin?‖

Together they walked down the corridor, manned now by Boris‘s military cadre, to the men‘s room.

―I‘ll have my medic check you out.‖

Bourne waved away his words. ―I‘m fine, Boris.‖ He was marveling at the scope of Arkadin‘s demonic genius.

Inside, Bourne went to the line of sinks and began to wash the blood and bits of glass off himself. As he did so, Karpov handed him a roll of paper towels.

―Think about it, Boris, why would Arkadin trick me into coming here—

especially, as you said, with a beautiful young woman?‖ It pained Bourne to talk about Tracy, but as much as she was still on his mind, he had a mystery to unravel—and a deadly enemy to confront.

A light suddenly came on behind Karpov‘s eyes. ―Arkadin was banking on you killing Yevsen?‖

Bourne splashed tepid water over his face, feeling the small cuts and bruises stinging like nettles. ―Or Yevsen killing me. Either way, he‘d win.‖

Karpov shook himself like a dog coming out of the rain. ―If what you theorize is true, he might have known of my raid. He wouldn‘t want Yevsen singing about him or anyone else. Dammit, I‘ve seriously underestimated that man.‖

Bourne turned his blood-streaked face toward the colonel. ―He‘s more than a man, Boris. Like me, he‘s a graduate of Treadstone. Alex Conklin trained Arkadin, just like he trained me, to become the ultimate undercover killing machine, carrying out covert operations impossible for anyone else to accomplish.‖

―And just where is this devilish graduate now?‖ Boris asked.

Bourne wiped his face down with a fistful of paper towels. They came away pink. ―Tracy told me before she died. Yevsen said he was in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan.‖

―Mountain country, I know it well,‖ Boris said. ―I discovered the area was one of Yevsen‘s prime stopovers for the Air Afrika flights transshipping his illegal arms throughout this continent. It‘s home to a number of indigenous tribes—all of them fanatic Muslims.‖

―That makes sense.‖ Bourne regarded his face in the mirror, taking stock of the damage, which was superficial but extensive. Whose reflection stared back at him? Tracy surely would have empathized with that question, no doubt having many times asked it of herself. ―Ivan told me that Arkadin has taken over the Eastern Brotherhood, which means he‘s also the leader of their Black Legion terrorists. Maybe he‘s trying to branch out into Yevsen‘s multibillion-dollar business.‖

Then Bourne saw the Goya that Karpov had propped up against the tile wall. ―Do you know a man named Noah Petersen, or Perlis?‖

―No, why?‖

―He‘s a senior officer in Black River.‖

―The American risk management company—also known as private contractors for your government—also known as mercenaries.‖

―Right on all three counts.‖ Bourne led the way back out into the corridor, which stank of gunpowder and death. ―Tracy was bringing the Goya to Noah, but I believe now it was actually a payment to Yevsen for services rendered. That‘s the only logical explanation for Noah being here.‖

―So Yevsen, Black River, and Arkadin are in something together.‖

Bourne nodded. ―Did you or your men encounter an American when you raided the building?‖

Karpov pulled a small walkie-talkie off its Velcro patch on his vest and spoke into it. After the crackle of an answer had been received, he shook his head. ―You‘re the only American in the building, Jason. But there‘s a Sudanese of questionable character who claims he was being interrogated by an American just before the raid began.‖

Perlis must have been lured away by Bourne‘s diversion with the lurker.

Where had he gone? Bourne could feel himself approaching the center of the web, where the lethal spider patiently lay in wait. ―And since Black River‘s main client is the NSA, there‘s a good chance it has to do with the ratcheted-up tension in Iran.‖

―You think Nikolai Yevsen is arming a Black River raiding party ready to invade Iran?‖

―Highly unlikely,‖ Bourne said. ―The NSA can provide more than enough state-of-the-art armaments that Yevsen could never get his hands on. Besides, for that they wouldn‘t need Arkadin‘s help. No, the Americans have identified the missile that brought down the plane—it‘s Iranian, a Kowsar 3.‖

Karpov nodded. ―Now it‘s starting to make sense. This Goya is payment to Yevsen for supplying the Kowsar 3.‖

At that moment, Karpov spotted one of his men jogging along the hallway toward him. He stared at Bourne for a moment, then handed his commander a sheet of curling thermal paper—clearly a printout from a portable printer.

―Get Lirov,‖ Karpov said as he scanned the document. ―Tell him to bring his full kit. I want this man checked out from stem to stern.‖

The soldier nodded wordlessly and sped off.

―I told you I didn‘t need—‖

Karpov held up a hand. ―Hold on, you‘ll want to hear this. My IT man was able to salvage something from Yevsen‘s servers after all—apparently they weren‘t completely wiped.‖ He handed Bourne the sheet of thermal paper. ―Here are Yevsen‘s last three transactions.‖

Bourne did a quick scan of the information. ―The Kowsar 3.‖

―Right. Just as we surmised, Yevsen acquired an Iranian Kowsar 3 and sold it to Black River.‖

Where are you going?‖ Humphry Bamber said, twisting around in his seat. ―And why are you holding a gun?‖

―Someone knows you‘re here,‖ Moira said.

―Dear God.‖ Bamber moaned and began to get up.

―Stay right there.‖ Moira held him down with a firm hand. She could feel the chills running through him in waves. ―We know someone‘s coming and we know what he wants.‖

―Yeah, me dead. You don‘t expect me to sit here and wait for a bullet in the back.‖

―I expect you to do what you‘ve done before, help me.‖ She looked down into his pinched face. ―Can I count on you?‖

He swallowed hard and nodded. ―Okay, now show me the bathroom.‖

Dondie Parker liked his work—almost too much, some said. Others, like his boss, Noah Perlis, appreciated the almost religious fervor with which he committed to his assignments. Parker liked Perlis. It seemed to him as if the two of them occupied the same gray space at the fringe of society, the place where both of them could make anything happen—the one with his command, the other with his hands and his weapons of choice.

After Parker got through the rear entrance to Humphry Bamber‘s building, he considered his life‘s work, which he privately likened to a polished wooden box filled with a collection of the most expensive and aromatic cigars. The climax of each assignment, the death of each target, lay in that box for him to revisit anytime he chose. To take out, one by one, smell, roll between his fingers, and taste. They took the place of military ribbons—

medals of valor—commemorating actions necessary, as Noah had said to him time and again, to the welfare and security of the homeland. Parker liked the word homeland.It was so much more powerful, more evocative, more virile than the word nation.

Parker removed his shoes, tied the laces together, and, slinging them over his shoulder, climbed the stairs. When he reached the second floor, he went down the hallway to the far end, where a window overlooked the fire escape. Unlatching the window, he threw it open and climbed out, making his way up floor by floor, like a fly climbing a wall.

Noah Perlis had found Dondie Parker in one of the local ghetto gyms.

Parker was part of a boxing club, the leading contender in the regional welterweight division. He was an exceptional boxer because he learned fast, had tons of stamina, and had found a way to channel his murderous aggression.

On the other hand, he wasn‘t crazy about concussions and fractured ribs, so when Noah showed up and expressed an interest in him, Parker was only too happy to listen to his proposition.

To say that Dondie Parker owed Noah everything would not be overstating the case, a fact that was ever on Parker‘s mind, never more so than when, as now, he was carrying out an assignment that came directly from Noah. Noah reported to only one man, Oliver Liss, who was so far up the Black River food chain he seemed to be in another universe altogether. Parker was so accomplished that every now and then Oliver Liss would call him in and give him a personal assignment, which Parker carried out immediately and without telling anyone, including Noah. If Noah knew about these extracurricular assignments, he never said anything to Parker, and Parker was happy to leave those horrific sleeping dogs lie.

He‘d reached the floor of Humphry Bamber‘s office. And now, after one more recheck of the building layout Noah had sent to his cell, he crept down to the other end of the fire escape, where he peered in a window. He saw all manner of electronic equipment, most of it up and running, so he knew Bamber had to be there. He untied his laces and slipped on his shoes. Then, taking out his jimmy-picks, he forced open the window with minimal difficulty.

Drawing his custom SIG Sauer, he climbed through.

He turned as he heard the sound of someone urinating. Grinning to himself, he made his way toward the sound of urine striking porcelain. The only thing better would be to drill Bamber while he was on the throne.