The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)

The gunfire continued to track him, moving closer and closer. That was when Bourne heard the sirens. Someone had called the cops. He saw the flashing lights as a string of police vehicles rounded a corner and raced down the street toward the lot.

The men in the copter saw them too. With a last burst of gunfire at the place where Bourne had been moments before, the copter rose, banked, and, as the sirens wailed ever louder, vanished into the rising sun.

11

MS. MOORE IS out of surgery and in recovery,” the doctor said.

There was a collective sigh of relief in the waiting room. “Is she okay?” Secretary Hendricks said.

“We relieved the pressure and stopped the bleeding. We’ll know more in the next twenty-four hours.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Thorne blurted.

Delia quickly placed herself between him and the surgeon. “How is the fetus?”

“We’re monitoring it. We’re hopeful.” The surgeon was pale. He looked wiped out. “But, again, the next number of hours are critical for both mother and child.”

Delia took a breath and let it out. “So you can’t rule out...intervention.”

“At this point,” the surgeon said, “nothing should be ruled out.” He looked at them. “When she wakes up, I think it would help if she saw a friendly face.”

Hendricks stepped forward. “I should—”

“With all due respect,” Delia said, “if she sees you, the first thing she’ll think of is Peter, and he’s not here, is he?”

“No.” Hendricks turned to the doctor. “I would like very much to see her, if you don’t mind.”

The surgeon nodded. He was clearly uncertain, but cowed by Hendricks’s position. “But only for a moment, Mr. Secretary.”

I’m so sorry,” Hendricks said, bent over Soraya’s supine form. “I fear I’ve asked far too much of you.”

Her huge, dark eyes regarded him woozily, ru

He smiled, brushing damp hair off her forehead. There was a tube ru

“Your job is one thing,” Hendricks said. “But this—what has come about because of it, is quite another.”

Beneath the ebbing torpor of the anaesthesia, her eyes showed surprise. “You know.”

He nodded. “The doctors said not to worry. The baby’s fine.”

A tear welled out of her eye, rolling down her cheek.

“Soraya, I forced you to cross a line with Charles Thorne that should never be crossed.”

“I did,” she whispered, her voice paper-thin. “ Idid.”

He shook his head, his expression genuinely sorrowful. “Soraya. I—”

“No regrets,” she said, just before the surgeon came in and ordered an end to the interview.

At almost the very moment Hendricks returned to the waiting room, his mobile buzzed. He glanced down. “Ah, well. The president needs me.”

“How is she?” Delia’s anxiety was written all over her face.

“Weak, but she seems okay.” He looked around for his coat, but his bodyguard, stepping into the room, handed it to him. “Listen, you have my mobile number. Keep me posted.”

“Absolutely.”

“Well.” He shrugged on his coat. “I’m deeply relieved.”

As it had been doing all morning, Delia’s mind flashed back to her first meeting with Soraya. After the bomb had been defused and it had been delivered to a joint forensics team, the two women had returned to their respective offices. But late in the day, Delia’s phone had rung. Soraya asked if she would join her for a drink.

They met in a dim, smoky bar that smelled of beer and bourbon.

Soraya took her hand. “I never saw anything like that.” She looked up at Delia’s face. ‘You’ve got the fingers of an artist.”

Delia was dumbstruck. The instant Soraya took her hand, she felt a tingling that ran all the way up her arm. It entered her torso, and where it ended up made her realize that she wasn’t asexual after all. She could barely recall what they talked about as they drank, but as they moved to the restaurant next door, and the conversation turned to their backgrounds, Delia’s mind snapped back into focus. Both she and Soraya viewed themselves as outsiders: They didn’t hang in groups, they weren’t joiners, even though the fast track in any meaningful job in DC required joining as many clubs as possible.

“We all are,” Delia said now to Secretary Hendricks, though she was acutely aware that the stab of fear she had experienced when Hendricks had called her had not fully dissipated.

Silence, though somewhere a dog barked. Stasis, though somewhere a car started up.

“Well?”

Peter felt Brick’s gaze descend on him like a hammer blow.

“Act!”

Peter took Dick Richards’s chin in his hand, tilting his head up so that their eyes met. “Yes, it’s true—I want a position at your company.” Deep in Richards’s eyes he could see that the other had been listening closely to every word that had been spoken in his presence. He knew that Tom Brick knew Peter as Tony. If he had any sense at all, he’d know that Peter was undercover. But Peter was looking into the eyes of a presumed triple agent. Deep down, whose side did Dick Richards want to be on? He supposed it was time to find out.

He let go of Richards’s chin and, snapping free the Glock’s cartridge, found it to be empty. He checked the chamber: one bullet. Had he been expected to kill Richards with a single shot?

Looking up into Brick’s interested face, he said, “You’ve ordered me to act.” Turning the handgun around, he returned it to Bogdan, who seemed to be sunk deep into a sulk, possibly because he had been denied the prospect of physical mayhem. Like a retriever who needed daily ru

Peter turned to Tom Brick, who stared at him for a moment. Suddenly, Brick broke out into a fit of laughter and, going into a deep cockney accent, said, “Crikey Moses, gov, you’ve got some pair a cobbler’s awls, you ’ave.”

Peter blinked. “What?”

“Cobbler’s awls. Balls,” Bogdan said unexpectedly. “Cockneys’re always street-rhyming. It’s in their nature.”

Brick pointed to Richards. “Bogs, untie the little bugger, yeah?” reverting to his normal refined accent. “Then have a bit of a dekko outside, make sure we’re comfy, cozy, and all on our onlys, there’s a good lad.”

Richards sat still as a statue as Bogdan untied him, kept sitting still as a statue as the hulking bodyguard loaded his Glock’s magazine and snapped it into place. It was only when Bogdan stalked out of the room and he heard the front door slam that he slowly rose. He was as unsteady as a newborn colt.

Seeing this, Brick crossed to the bar, poured him a stiff whiskey. “Ice, yeah?”

“Right, yeah.” Richards looked not at him, but at Peter. There was a kind of pleading in his eyes, a silent apology.

Peter, his back to Brick, mouthed: Trust me.To his immense relief, Richards gave a tiny nod. Did that mean he could trust Richards? Far too early to say. But his expression was confirmation of Peter’s suspicion. Richards was, in fact, a double agent, reporting both to the president and to Brick. Peter fought back an urge to wring his scrawny neck. He needed answers. Why was Richards playing this dangerous game? What did Brick hope to gain?

Brick returned, handed Richards the whiskey, and said cheerily, “Bottoms up, lad!”

Turning to Peter, he said, “You know, I never would have let you put a bullet through Dick’s head.” At this, Richards nearly choked on his whiskey. “Nah, the little bugger’s far too valuable.” He eyed Peter. “Know as what?”