BY JASON BOURNE.
Having followed Rodney Feir and General Kendall over the Key Bridge into
Washington proper, Rob Batt made sure his long-lens SLR Nikon was fully loaded with
fast film. He shot a series of digital photos with a compact camera, but these were only
for reference, because they could be Photoshopped in a heartbeat. To forestall any
suspicion that the images might be manipulated, he’d present the undeveloped roll of film
to… well, this was his real problem. For a legitimate reason he was persona non grata at
CI. It was astonishing how quickly years-long associations vanished. But now he realized
he’d mistaken the camaraderie he’d developed with what had been his fellow directors
for friendship. As far as they were concerned he no longer existed, so going to them with
any alleged evidence that the NSA had turned yet another CI officer would be either
ignored or laughed at. Trying to approach Veronica Hart was similarly out of the
question. Assuming he could ever get to her-which he doubted-speaking to her now
would be like groveling. Batt had never groveled in his life, and he wasn’t going to now.
Then he laughed out loud at how easy it was to become self-deluded. Why should any
of his former colleagues want anything to do with him? He’d betrayed them, abandoned
them for the enemy. If he were in their shoes-and how he wished he were!-he’d feel the
same venomous animosity toward someone who’d sold him out, which was why he’d
embarked on this mission to destroy LaValle and Kendall. They’d sold him out-hung him
out to dry as soon as it suited their purposes. The moment he came on board, they’d taken
control of Typhon away from him.
Venomous animosity. That was an excellent phrase, he thought, one that precisely
defined his feelings toward LaValle and Kendall. He knew, deep down, that hating them
was the same as hating himself. But he couldn’t hate himself; that was self-defeating. At
this very moment he couldn’t believe he’d sunk so low as to defect to the NSA. He’d
gone through his line of thinking over and over, and now it seemed to him as if someone
else, some stranger, had made that decision. It hadn’t been him, it couldn’t have been
him, ergo, LaValle and Kendall had made him do it. For that they had to pay the ultimate
price.
The two men were on the move again, and Batt headed out after them. After a ten-
minute drive, the two cars ahead of him pulled into the crowded parking lot of The Glass
Slipper. As Batt passed by, Feir and Kendall got out of their respective cars and went
inside. Batt drove around the block, parked on a side street. Reaching into the glove
compartment, he took out a tiny Leica camera, the kind used by the Old Man in his
youthful days of surveillance. It was the old spy standby, as dependable as it was easy to
conceal. Batt loaded it with fast film, put it in the breast pocket of his shirt along with the digital camera, and got out of the car.
The night was filled with a gritty wind. Refuse spiraled up from the gutter, only to
come to rest in a different place. Jamming his hands in his coat pockets, Batt hurried
down the block and into The Glass Slipper. A slide guitarist was up on stage, wailing the
blues, warming up for the feature act, a high-powered band with several hit CDs under its
belt.
He’d heard about the club by reputation only. He knew, for instance, that it was owned
by Drew Davis, primarily because Davis was a larger-than-life character who continually
inserted himself into the political and economic affairs of African Americans in the
district. Thanks to his influence, homeless shelters had become safer places for their
residents, halfway houses had been built; he made it a point to hire ex-cons. He was so
cannily public about these hirings that the ex-cons had no choice but to make the most of
their second chances.
What Batt didn’t know about was the Slipper’s back room, so he was puzzled when,
after a full circuit of the space, plus an expedition to the men’s room, he could find no
trace of either Feir or the general.
Fearing that they’d slipped out the back, he returned to the parking lot, only to find
their cars where they’d left them. Back in the Slipper, he took another trip through the
crowd, figuring he must have missed them somehow. Still, there was no sign, but as he
neared the rear of the space he spotted someone talking to a muscled black man the
approximate size of a refrigerator. After a small bout of jawing, Mr. Muscle opened a
door Batt hadn’t noticed before, and the man slipped through. Guessing this was where
Feir and Kendall must have gone, Batt edged his way toward Mr. Muscle and the door.
It was then that he saw Soraya walk through the front door.
Bourne almost stripped the car’s gears trying to outrun the police car on their tail.
“Take it easy,” Petra said, “or you’ll tear my poor car apart.”
He wished he’d taken a longer look at the map of the city. A street blocked off with
wooden sawhorses flashed by on their left. The paving had been torn up, leaving the
heavily pitted and cracked underlayer, the worst parts of which were in the process of
being excavated.
“Hold on tight,” Bourne said as he reversed, then turned into the street and drove the
car through the sawhorses, cracking one and scattering the others. The car hit the
underlayer, jounced down the street at what seemed a reckless speed. It felt as if the
vehicle were being machine-gunned by a pile driver. Bourne’s teeth rattled in his head,
and Petra struggled to keep from crying out.
Behind them, the police car was having even more difficulty keeping to a straight path.
It jerked back and forth to avoid the deepest of the holes gouged in the roadbed. Putting
on another burst of speed, Bourne was able to lengthen the distance between them. But
then he glanced ahead. A cement truck was parked crosswise at the other end of the
street. If they kept going there was no way to avoid crashing into it.
Bourne kept the speed on as the cement truck loomed larger and larger. The police car
was coming up fast behind them.
“What are you doing?” Petra screamed. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
At that moment, Bourne threw the car into neutral, stepped on the brake. He
immediately changed into reverse, took his foot off the brake, and pressed the gas pedal
to the floor. The car shuddered, its engine screaming. Then the transmission locked into
place, and the car flew backward. The police car came on, its driver frozen in shock.
Bourne swerved around it as the vehicle raced forward into the side of the cement truck.
Bourne wasn’t even looking. He was busy steering the car back down the street in
reverse. Blasting past the shattered sawhorses, he turned, braked, put the car into first,
and drove off.
What the hell are you doing here?” Noah said. “You should be on your way to
Damascus.”
“I’m due to take off in four hours.” Moira put her hands in her pockets so he wouldn’t
see that they were curled into fists. “You haven’t answered my question.”
Noah sighed. “It doesn’t make any difference.”
Her laugh had a bitter taste to it. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Because,” Noah said, “you’ve been with Black River long enough to know how we
operate.”
They were walking down Kaufingerstrasse in the center of Munich, a heavily
trafficked area just off the Marienplatz. Turning in at the sign for the Augustiner
Bierkeller, they entered a long, dim cathedral-like space that smelled powerfully of beer
and boiled wurst. The hubbub of noise was just right for masking a private conversation.