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“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
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 spi
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
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.”
“You mean he was only following orders,” General Kendall said. “This isn’t
Nuremberg. Frankly, there’s no viable defense the two of you can put up. His conviction
and execution-as well as yours-are a fait accompli.”
They took her back to the Library, where Willard, seeing her ashen face, fetched her a
fresh pot of Ceylon tea. The three of them sat by the window. The fourth chair,
conspicuously empty, was an accusation to Soraya. Her grievous mismanagement of this
mission was compounded by the knowledge that she had seriously underestimated
LaValle. She’d been lulled by his smug, overaggressive nature into thinking he was the
sort of man who’d automatically underestimate her. She was dead wrong.
She fought the constriction in her chest, the panic welling up, the sense that she and
Tyrone were trapped in an impossible situation. She used the tea ritual to refocus herself.
For the first time in her life she added cream and sugar, and drank the tea as if it were
medication or a form of penance.
She was trying to get her brain unfrozen from shock, to get it working normally again.
In order to help Tyrone, she knew she needed to get herself out of here. If LaValle meant
to charge her as he threatened to do with Tyrone, she’d already be in an adjacent cell. The fact that they’d brought her back to the Library allowed a sliver of light into the darkness that had settled around her. She decided for now to allow this scenario to play out on
LaValle’s and Kendall’s terms.
The moment she set her teacup down, LaValle took up his ax. “As I said before,
Director, the real pity is your involvement. I’d hate to lose you as an ally-though, I see
now, I never really had you as an ally.”
This little speech sounded ca
“Frankly,” he continued, “in retrospect, I can see that you’ve lied to me from the first.
You never had any intention of switching your allegiance to NSA, did you?” He sighed,
as if he were a disciplinary dean addressing a bright but chronically wayward student.
“That’s why I can’t believe that you concocted this scheme on your own.”
“If I were a betting man,” Kendall said, “I’d wager your orders came from the top.”
“Veronica Hart is the real problem here.” LaValle spread his hands. “Perhaps through
the lens of what’s happened here today you can begin to see things as we do.”
Soraya didn’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind was blowing. Keeping
her voice deliberately neutral, she said, “How can I be of service?”
LaValle smiled genially, turned to Kendall, said, “You see, Richard, the director can be
of help to us, despite your reservations.” He quickly turned back to Soraya, his