The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)

But what about Peter? How had he managed to infiltrate Core Energy? How did he know about Tom Brick? If Richards was to choose a side, then he had to decide what to do about Peter. Should he tell Peter everything he knew about Brick, Core Energy, and the secret entity that did its bidding? Should he, on the other hand, reveal Peter’s real identity to Brick? Prior to working at Treadstone, the choice would have been a no-brainer. But now Treadstone had stymied him. He had to admit he liked it here. Unaccountably, the atmosphere was more like the private sector. There was little or no red tape, the co-directors saw to that.

On the horns of this dilemma, he continued his work, but his mind was elsewhere, so much so that he almost missed it. Some instinct, lodged in the most primitive part of his brain, the part humans counted on for survival, sent out a silent alarm that jerked him back to full concentration. Something was wrong. Immediately, he took his hands off the computer keyboard. Staring at the code he had been typing in, he felt an icy chill crawling down his spine. For a long time then, he did nothing but stare at the screen. Slowly, he drew his hands back from their position over the keyboard to rest them in his lap, as if he were a penitent, praying.

The normal sounds of the Treadstone office—hushed voices, the hum of machines, the careful tread of shoes—came to him as if from a great distance. His mobile phone ringing made him start. He picked it up.

“Richards, it’s Anderson.”

His guilty heart leaped into his throat, closing it down for a terrifying moment. “Yessir,” he eventually managed to croak.

“Made any progress?”

“The, uh, the Trojan is quarantined, sir.”

“Good deal.”

“It just...it’s proving more difficult than I imagined to get rid of. There’s...There seems to be some kind of mechanism embedded inside it.” The moment he said this, he knew it was a mistake.

“What the hell does that mean?” Anderson thundered.

He had been trying to absolve himself of any culpability when the virus struck, but it seemed he had only inflamed Anderson.

“Goddammit, Richards. Answer me!”

“I’m dealing with the problem, sir. It’s just going to take more time than I had expected.”

“Now that the Trojan’s quarantined, don’t mess with it further. I don’t want something else to be triggered.”

Oh, you fool, Richards berated himself.

“Your number one priority is to find out how that fucking thing jumped our firewall, got me?”

“Yessir.”

“I’ll be back at HQ in an hour. I want an answer by then.”

Richards’s hand was trembling as he cut the co

With a barely audible moan, he lurched away from the window and stumbled back to his desk. He now had what seemed an impossible deadline. Anderson would be back in less than an hour. By that time, he needed to understand his situation and find a way out.

Back at his desk, he ran his hands through his hair while he stared at the screen. What was wrong? There was the most minute lag between his pressing the keys and seeing the code on the screen. Changing screens, he checked the hardware through the Control Panel, but no recent additions had been made. Device Manager produced the same results. But when he checked the computer’s CPU usage, he saw an unusual spike upward that dated back to the time he had started working. He felt a sudden rush of blood to his head. API based keyloggers added to the CPU usage as they polled and recorded each keystroke.

That bastard Anderson, Richards thought fiercely. He had an API based keylogger inserted into the software, which picked up every keystroke Richards made. The whole thing was premeditated, a setup. But how? There was only one answer: Peter Marks. Marks had betrayed him, had had no faith that he might give Tom Brick up to Treadstone.

A great rage filled Richards. He shook with the force of it. He looked one last time at the screen of incomplete virus code and thought: Fuck it. Fuck him. Fuck them all.

Without another thought, he disabled the keylogger software and continued with his code, working without even seeming to breathe. In the back of his mind, he prayed Anderson would show up early.

Almost fifty minutes later, six minutes before Anderson was due to arrive, Richards set the last section of the code in place. All he needed to do now was press the enter key and the virus would flood the onsite Treadstone servers, bringing down the entire network, freezing the communication cha

He stood up, grabbed his coat, and, with one stab downward, hit enter. Then he crossed the room, went out the door, took the elevator to the lobby, and walked out, on his way back to his life with Tom Brick.

In the smoky distance, sirens wailed.

By the sound of them, vehicles were racing toward the Basilica de Guadelupe. The Mass was finished. Someone had found the body of el Enterrador.

“I don’t know where Maceo Encarnación and Nicodemo were going,” Anunciata said. “But I know someone who might.”

“Tell me,” Bourne said. He kept a sharp eye on the street, on the lookout for police cars.

“I’ll take you there.”

“No.” Bourne looked at her. “Your involvement is at an end.” He produced the wallet he had taken from Rebeka’s body. “It’s time for you to leave.” The last of Rebeka would go toward helping someone escape into a new life. He knew she would have liked that.

He opened the wallet, showing Anunciata the contents. “There’s money here, more than enough to set you up somewhere far away from Mexico. And a passport.” He paged through it. “You see my friend’s photo. You can pass for her. You’re more or less the same height and weight. Find a good salon, get your hair cut and dyed to match hers. A little makeup from a professional. That’s all you need.”

“Mexico is my home.”

“It will also be your death. Leave. Now. After today, it will be too late.”

Anunciata, holding the keys to her new life in the palms of her hands, looked up at him. Her eyes were swollen with tears. “Why are you doing this?”

“You deserve a chance at a new life,” he said.

“I don’t know whether I have the strength—”

“It’s what your mother wanted for you.”

The tears welled, falling. The sirens kept up a wail that could have come from her.

“There’s something...”

Bourne waited, then he engaged her eyes. “Anunciata?”

“Nothing.” She looked up. “It’s nothing.” She smiled. “Thank you.”

“Now,” Bourne said, folding her fingers over the wallet, “tell me who I need to see.”

Salazar Flores was an aviation mechanic. He worked mainly on private planes, most notably Maceo Encarnación’s Bombardier Global 5000. Bourne found him on the job in the maintenance hangar at the private airfield Encarnación used to house the Bombardier, exactly where Anunciata said he’d be at this time of the morning.

Flores was a short, sharp-eyed man in his middle years. His jowly cheeks were smeared with grease and his spatulate hands were permanently dyed by the fluids he used every day. He looked up sideways when Bourne approached him, then he stood and, wiping his hands on a greasy rag he pulled out of a back pocket of his overalls, faced the newcomer.