around. Chiefly, though, he suspected it was because they were jealous. Laughing at what
you didn’t have and never would was, he supposed, better than letting it depress you.
Icoupov’s people were the only ones who paid as well. But they used him far less than
the Americans. On the other hand, they had him on retainer. Yakov knew Harun Iliev
well, had dealt with him a number of times before, and both liked and trusted him.
Besides, they were both Muslim. Yakov kept his religion a secret in Moscow, especially
from the Americans, who, stupidly, would have dropped him like a fake ruble.
Directly after the American attachй contacted him for the job, Yakov had called Harun
Iliev. As a consequence, Harun had already inserted himself in the staff of the
Metropolya Hotel through a cousin of his, who worked in the kitchen as one of the
expediters. He coordinated food orders for the line chefs. The moment he saw the room-
service order come down from 1728, Bourne’s room, he called Harun.
“We’re short-staffed tonight,” he said. “Get down here in the next five minutes and I’ll
make sure you’re the one to take the order up to him.”
Harun Iliev quickly presented himself to his cousin and was shown to a trolley, neatly
covered in starched white linen, laden with covered bowls, platters, plates, silverware,
and napkins. Thanking his cousin for this opportunity to get to Jason Bourne, he rolled
his trolley to the service elevator. Someone was already there. Harun took him to be one
of the hotel managers until, as they entered the elevator, he turned so Harun caught a
fleeting glimpse of his pulped face and the silver patch over one eye.
Harun reached out, pressed the button for the seventeenth floor. The man pressed the
button for the eighteenth. The elevator stopped at the fourth floor, where a maid got on
with her turn-down cart. She exited a floor later.
The elevator had just passed the fifteenth floor when the man reached over, pulled out
the large red EMERGENCY STOP button. Harun turned to question the man’s action,
but the man fired one bullet from a exceptionally quiet 9mm Welrod equipped with a
suppressor. The bullet pierced Harun’s forehead, tore through his brain. He was dead
before he collapsed to the elevator floor.
Anthony Prowess mopped up what little blood there was with a napkin from the room-
service cart. Then he quickly stripped the clothes off his victim, donned the uniform of
the Metropolya Hotel. He pushed in the EMERGENCY STOP button again and the
elevator continued its ascent to the seventeenth floor. After determining that the hallway
was clear, Prowess consulted a map of the floor, dragged the corpse into a utility room,
then wheeled the cart around the corner to room 1728.
Why don’t you take shower? A long hot,” Bourne said.
Gala’s expression was mischievous. “If I stink at least it’s not as bad as you.” She
began to slip out of her mini skirt. “Why don’t we take one together?”
“Some other time. I have business to attend to.”
Her lower lip comically pouted. “God, what could be more boring?”
Bourne laughed as she crossed into the bathroom, closed the door behind her. Soon
after, the sound of running water came to him, along with tiny curls of steam. He turned
on the TV, watched a dreadful show in Russian with the sound turned up.
There was a knock on the door. Bourne rose from his position on the bed, opened the
door. A uniformed waiter in a short jacket and a hat with a bill pulled down over his face
pushed a trolley full of food into the room. Bourne signed the bill, the waiter turned to
leave. Instantly he whirled, a knife in his hand. In one blurred movement, he drew his
arm back. But Bourne was ready. As the waiter threw the knife Bourne raised a domed
metal top off a chafing dish, used it as a shield to deflect the knife. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it spinning at the waiter, who ducked out of the way. The edge of the
domed top caught his hat, spun it off his head, revealing the puffy face of the man who’d
strangled Baronov and tried to kill Bourne, as well.
The attacker drew a Welrod and squeezed off two shots before Bourne shoved the cart
into his midsection. He staggered back. Bourne threw himself across the cart, grabbed
Prowess by the front of the uniform, then wrestled him to the floor.
Bourne managed to kick away the Welrod. The man attacked with hands and feet,
moving Bourne so that he could regain possession of the gun. Bourne could see the patch
over the NSA agent’s eye, could only surmise the damage he’d inflicted.
The agent feinted one way, then caught Bourne flush on the jaw. Bourne staggered and
his attacker was on him with another wire, which he whipped around Bourne’s neck.
Pulling hard on it, he drew Bourne back to his feet. Bourne staggered against the cart. As
it skittered away from him, he grabbed the chafing dish, hurled its contents in the agent’s face. The scalding soup struck the attacker like a torch, and he shouted but failed to drop the wire, instead pulling it tighter, jerking Bourne against his chest.
Bourne was on his knees, his back arched. His lungs were screaming for oxygen, his
muscles were rapidly losing their strength, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to
concentrate. Soon, he knew, he’d pass out.
With his remaining strength, he jabbed his elbow into the agent’s crotch. The wire
slacked off enough for him to get to his feet. He slammed the back of his head into the
agent’s face, heard the satisfying thunk as the man’s head struck the wall. The wire
slackened a bit more, enough for Bourne to pull it from his throat, gasping in air, and
reverse their positions, wrapping the wire around Prowess’s neck. He fought and kicked
like a madman, but Bourne held on, working the wire tighter and tighter, until the agent’s
body went slack. His head toppled to one side. Bourne didn’t slacken the wire until he’d
assured himself there was no longer a pulse. Then he let the man slide to the floor.
He was bent over, hands on thighs, taking deep, slow breaths when Gala walked out of
the bathroom amid a halo of lavender-scented mist.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. Then she turned and vomited all over her bare pink feet.
Twenty-Three
ANY WAY you slice it or dice it,” Luther LaValle said, “he’s a dead man.”
Soraya stared bleakly through the one-way glass at Tyrone, who was standing in a
cubicle ominously outfitted with a shallow coffin-like tub that had restraints for wrists
and ankles, a fire hose above it. In the center of the room a steel table was bolted down to the bare concrete floor, beneath which was a drain to sluice both water and blood away.
LaValle held up the digital camera. “General Kendall found this on your compatriot.”
He touched a button, and the photos Tyrone had taken scrolled across the camera’s
screen. “This smoking gun is enough to convict him of treason.”
Soraya couldn’t help wondering how many shots of the torture chambers Tyrone had
managed to take before he was caught.
“Off with his head,” Kendall said, baring his teeth.
Soraya could not rid herself of the sick feeling in her stomach. Of course, Tyrone had
been in dangerous situations before, but she was directly responsible for putting him in
harm’s way. If anything happened to him she knew she’d never be able to forgive herself.
What was she thinking involving him in such perilous work? The enormity of her
miscalculation was all too clear to her now, when it was too late to do anything about it.
“The real pity,” LaValle went on, “is that with very little difficulty we can make a case