The Bourne Dominion (48 page)

“No secrets from you, are there? Why am I not surprised.” Boris laughed humorlessly. “Let me tell you something, my friend, several hours ago the man who forced me to make a decision between killing you and keeping my career was on the other end of my special form of hello.”

“So you have removed the need to kill me.”

“There was never any need, Jason. If I did what Viktor Cherkesov ordered me to do, there wouldn’t be enough of me left to have a career.” He grunted. “And by the way, how do you know that that prime dick Semid Abdul-Qahhar lives here?”

“How do you?”

The two men laughed together.

Boris slapped Bourne on the back. “Dammit, Jason, it’s good to see you! We must have a toast to our reunion, but first I’m expecting Konstantin Beria, the head of SVR, and his little prick, Zachek, to show up here.”

“How is that?”

Boris told him about the key that Cherkesov was tasked by the Domna to bring to Semid Abdul-Qahhar.

“You let Beria have it?” Bourne said.

Boris laughed. “For all the good it will do him. It’s not a real key, it doesn’t open anything. It’s modeled after the keys in a Flash video game.” Seeing the look on Bourne’s face, he added, “Hard to believe, but someone inside the Domna has a sense of humor.”

“What’s hard to believe is that you know anything about video games.”

“I need to keep up with the times, Jason, otherwise I’ll get run over by the young technocrats coming to power. They use video games to keep their skills sharp and the smell of blood in their nostrils.”

“You and I use the field.”

“They’re useless in the field, the young ones. They’re always looking for shortcuts.”

“For keys to unlock the next level.”

“That’s right. They don’t think for themselves.”

A cooling wind snaked down the street, bringing with it the scent of spices. The muezzins started up, the amplified calls to prayer drowning out all other noise. The street drained of people.

“The key was a test,” Bourne said.

Boris nodded. “To see if Cherkesov was trustworthy and obedient.”

“He failed.”

“Miserably. But Semid Abdul-Qahhar doesn’t know that yet. And Beria doesn’t know I’m waiting for him.” Boris put an arm across Bourne’s chest. “Hold on. They’re coming.”

Bourne saw two men approaching. They wore long coats that reached down to the tops of their shoes, a clear indication that they were carrying long-barreled weapons. The older man was short and feral looking, the other younger and taller, with a face that looked like it had been put through a meat grinder. Bourne smiled as he thought of Boris’s fists making vicious contact with the technocrat.

“I want these cocksuckers,” Boris said. “They tried to kill me.”

“It looks like they’re carrying some heavy weapons,” Bourne said.

“So I see.”

Bourne was preparing himself when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure in a black robe and
hijab
come stealthily down the street from the other end. It was Rebeka.

T
he security for Indigo Ridge once more set, Hendricks did precisely what Skara had asked him not to do: He went looking for her. First, he tried her cell phone, but got a Chinese man who told him to go to hell in Mandarin. Next, he had a private conversation with Jonathan Brey, the head of the FBI. He and Brey went back a long time; they exchanged favors regularly.

“Anything you want, Chris,” Brey said, “it’s yours.”

“I’m looking for someone who’s dropped out of sight,” Hendricks said, consumed with shame, humiliation, and the singular anguish of a jilted lover. “She may have already left the country.” He paused. “She entered as Margaret Penrod, which was an alias, but I have no doubt she’s now under another assumed name.”

“Any idea what that might be?”

Again, those terrible emotions washed over Hendricks. “I do not.”

“Photo?”

“I’ll have one sent over.”
The government vetting process must have one
, Hendricks thought,
otherwise I’ll look even more like an idiot.
“Right now, though, I need two of your best investigators.”

“Done,” Brey said.

H
endricks met the agents at Skara’s apartment. When the doorbell went unanswered, the agents broke in, sidearms drawn, even though Hendricks told them that wasn’t necessary. Procedure, they said in almost robotic unison. Once they had secured the premises, they retired to the doorway, as Hendricks ordered, lurking like a pair of leashed guard dogs.

Hendricks took a tour around the small one-bedroom apartment. The living room was depressingly bare, exuding the stale air of abandonment. There was nothing to tell him that she had been there. Ditto, the tiny bathroom; only lint lay like sand on the narrow shelves of the medicine cabinet. The toilet tank held only water, the bathtub had been washed clean of sediment and hairs.

He stepped into the bedroom and immediately smelled her. He went through the drawers of the dresser, which were all empty. Pulling them out, he turned them over, looking for something taped to their undersides. The closet was occupied by an assortment of hangers, nothing more. The bedside table had one drawer in which he found two paper clips, a card for her fake business, and the nub of a pencil.

With a heavy sigh, he sat down on the bad, feeling it give just the way her body gave under his weight. Wrists on knees, he bent over and stared at the floor. He missed her, there was no denying it. A hole gaped
open inside him. He thought he had made sure he’d never feel that way again. His eyes swam out of focus, his thoughts swirled like water down a drain. At that moment his cell phone burred.

“Hendricks.”

“Mr. Secretary, this is CI agent Tyrone Elkins.”

The words slowly penetrated Hendricks’s muzzy mind. “How did you get my number, son?”

“I have a message from Peter Marks.”

Hendricks’s brow furrowed and tension came into his shoulders and arms. “Where is Peter?”

“He’s safe, sir. He’s been under attack. He needs to talk with you.”

“Well, put him on.” There was a pause. “Peter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you all right?”

“I am, sir.”

“What the hell has happened to you?”

Peter recounted the near miss with the car bomb and his escape from the ambulance with its impostor crew. “It was sheer luck that Tyrone was behind me,” Peter concluded.

“Where the hell are you? I’ll send people to—”

“All due respect, sir, after the breaches in security you warned me of and the breach at the Treadstone building, I’d rather no one know where I am for the moment. Soraya found me through Bourne.”

“Bourne?”

“Both Soraya and Bourne know Tyrone, sir. That’s all it’s safe to say at the moment.”

“And Soraya?”

“Still in Paris. She found out who ordered the murder of her contact. Benjamin El-Arian. He’s dead.” He continued on, telling his boss about the intel he had found that had triggered the attacks on him. “You’ve got to send a team to bring Roy FitzWilliams back to DC for questioning ASAP. FitzWilliams consulted for this Syrian mining company, El-Gabal, and failed to report it when he was vetted.”

Another failure of the vetting process, Hendricks thought. It was a wonder this government was still standing.

Peter said: “We’re looking at an imminent threat on US soil.”

“
Remember me when you are protecting Indigo Ridge
,” Skara had said.

“Indigo Ridge,” Hendricks breathed.

“My thought exactly.”

“Good work, Peter.”

“Sir, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. You were right about assigning me Indigo Ridge in this roundabout way.”

“I’m just happy my decision didn’t lead to your death.”

“Your job is no bed of roses,” Peter said. “But you do it well.”

“Thanks.” Hendricks thought a moment. “To maintain security until we have this situation nailed down, have Tyrone phone me every day at noon. I’ll let you know as soon as FitzWilliams is in custody. You deserve to be in on the interrogation.”

He closed the connection and called his Indigo Ridge field operations director, who was already getting flak from Danziger.

“Forget about him,” Hendricks said. “I want you to take a detachment and take Roy FitzWilliams into custody.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. Assign your best man to fly him back to DC ASAP. I’ll have an air force plane waiting for you. I want him delivered directly to me, is that clear?”

“As crystal, sir. Consider it done.”

Hendricks called an air force general of his acquaintance and got him to authorize a jet to stand by. As he put his phone away, his gaze fell on Skara’s card, lying in the drawer of the bedside table.

“
Your job is no bed of roses
,” Peter had said.

Into his mind swam an image of Skara as he had seen her the day they met, kneeling in his tiny strip of a garden, tending his roses.

He snatched up the card. There was a rose planted squarely in its center. With his heart pounding, he jumped up and ran out of the apartment, leaving the bewildered FBI agents in his wake.

R
ebeka no longer looked like a flight attendant; there was a certain intensity about her, sharply alert and purposeful. Her eyes were eager, her cheeks flushed, as if she were about to hurl herself at Fate head-on. She had transformed herself into an avenging angel. She had changed clothes since he’d left her in the restaurant, confirming what he had suspected: She had her own agenda concerning the occupants of the synagogue. All she’d been lacking was the trigger, which he himself had provided when he had given her the identity of the Arab who was desecrating the Jewish house of worship alongside which she had chosen to live. He now suspected that she was Mossad, but in the end it didn’t matter. She was out to infiltrate the synagogue and assassinate Semid Abdul-Qahhar. The trouble was she was walking blind into a lethal crossfire between Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s men and the SVR. He had to stop her.

He was preparing himself to block her way when she veered off. She wasn’t headed for the alley that led to the synagogue after all. But because of their interrupted discussion over dinner concerning the synagogue’s architectural plan, he knew where she was going.

Grabbing Boris, he headed down the street after her.

Boris pulled back. “Are you crazy? You’re going to screw up everything.”

Bourne turned back to him. “It’s a matter of trust, Boris.”

Hesitating only a moment, Boris nodded, then followed Bourne as he headed left, down an alley that ran more or less parallel to the one leading to the synagogue.

Up ahead, Bourne saw Rebeka vanish to the left. He picked up his pace, Boris right behind him. When he reached the spot where Rebeka had disappeared, he saw a passageway no wider than shoulder-width. He plunged in, summoning up the plan of the ancient synagogue as Rebeka had described it to him.

Abruptly he came to the end of the passageway. A blank wall faced him.

“What the hell is this, Jason?” Boris whispered.

“We’re following a Mossad agent who knows another way into the synagogue.”

“How? Did she melt through solid stone?”

They were engulfed in darkness. Bourne reviewed everything he had learned about the synagogue from Rebeka. He knew where it was in relation to the passageway, so he turned to the left and felt along the stone wall, searching for a lever or handle. Nothing. Then he stepped back a pace, almost bumping into Boris, and his right foot scraped against a metal grate.

Both men backed up enough for Bourne to kneel down and feel around with his fingers. The grate was square, large enough for a human being to fit through. Curling his fingers through the holes, he pulled upward. The grate gave easily and he stood it on end against one wall. Then he slipped his legs into the hole. His shoes struck something.

“There’s a ladder,” he said to Boris, who had squatted beside him.

The two men climbed down. The ladder was made of iron, flaking off beneath their grip, attesting to its extreme age. They arrived at the lower level, which was carved out of the living rock. To their left Bourne saw a soft glow, and he and Boris followed it until Bourne was certain they were beneath the synagogue. A set of stone steps led upward, and Bourne and Boris took them, moving with extreme stealth.

At the top of the stairs was a narrow door made of hand-planed hardwood, bound with wide bronze bands. Cautiously, Bourne depressed the iron lever and pushed the door inward. They stepped across the threshold and found themselves in a section of the synagogue that was still in the process of being renovated. Sheets of striated marble and black stone lay against one wall or across rough-hewn sawhorses, where they were being cut to size. Curtains of undyed muslin closed off the area to protect the rest of the interior against the stone dust.

They crept forward until they were at the muslin curtains. Bourne listened for any sounds of a struggle, but heard only the hushed sound of footsteps muffled by carpets, the occasional word or two of Arabic, spoken softly but urgently.

Parting the curtains, they slipped through into the central section, renovated in the Arabic style.

“This Mossad agent is going to get herself killed here,” Boris whispered.

“The name she’s going by is Rebeka, Bourne said.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the SVR and Semid Abdul-Qahhar will kill each other,” Boris muttered as he stared into the middle distance.

But Bourne could tell by his tone that he didn’t believe it. Nothing in their world was ever so neatly wrapped up, there was too much rage and high emotion, too much blood already spilled, so much more to be poured out.

They moved forward. The great spaces the ancient architects of the synagogue had provided were now broken up into small rooms, all ornately painted and furnished, like a sultan’s seraglio. There was none of the desert Arab’s austere sensibility to be found. All the prayer rugs were opulent, woven of the finest silk in intricate, jewel-tone patterns.

“Where the hell are Beria and his lackey?” Boris whispered.

Bourne wondered where anyone was. He had no idea how many men Semid Abdul-Qahhar had with him or how heavily armed they were. He looked up and discovered a safe way to find out. The rooms were constructed with thick, hand-hewn beams of fragrant cedar that rose to a height of ten feet, well below the height of the original structure. There was no ceiling to the rooms, simply crossbeams to keep the vertical ones true, and swaths of fabric hung from beam to beam.