The Bourne Sanction

Most of Yakov’s other clients laughed at the kind of money the Americans threw 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, do

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 ru

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 spi

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 against you, as well.”

Soraya was solely focused on Tyrone, whom she had wronged so terribly.

“This was my idea,” she said dully. “Let Tyrone go.”