Robert Ludlum - Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

— Excuse us a moment, would you? Bourne said to Tracy and Chalthoum.

When the two of them were far enough away to afford them ade-quate privacy, Soraya said, — Jason, what the hell? She was still looking at him as if she couldn‘t quite believe what her eyes were telling her.

— It‘s a long story, he said, — and we don‘t have the time now. He led Soraya a few more paces away from the other two. -Arkadin is still alive. He almost succeeded in killing me on Bali.

— No wonder you don‘t want anyone to know you‘re still alive.

Bourne glanced at Chalthoum. -What are you doing here with that Egyptian?

— Amun‘s with Egyptian intelligence. We‘re trying to find out who actually shot down the American jet.

— I thought the Iranians-

— Our forensics team determined that it was an Iranian Kowsar 3 missile that brought down the plane, Soraya said, — but now, inexplicably, it looks as if a cadre of four American military men might have brought it into Egypt through Sudan. That‘s why we‘re on our way to Khartoum.

Bourne could feel the strands of the spiderweb coming into sudden focus, and he bent toward Soraya as he said softly and urgently, — Listen carefully. Whatever Arkadin is up to involves both Nikolai Yevsen and Black River. I‘ve been wondering what would bring these three together. It could be that the cadre you‘re looking for aren‘t military per se, but are Black River personnel. He directed her attention to the red-and-white jet where he and Tracy had been headed. -Air Afrika is rumored to be owned by Yevsen, which would make sense-he needs a way to transship the illegal arms consignments to his clients.

While Soraya studied the plane, he continued: — If you‘re right about the American cadre, then where do you think they could possibly obtain an Iranian Kowsar 3 missile-from the Iranians themselves? He shook his head. -Yevsen is probably the only arms dealer in the world with enough contacts and power to get one.

— But why would Black River-?

— Black River‘s only there to do the heavy lifting, Bourne said. -It‘s whoever hired them that‘s guiding everything. You‘ve read the headlines. I think someone high up in the US government wants to go to war with Iran. You‘ll know better than me who it might be.

— Bud Halliday, Soraya said. -The secretary of defense.

— Halliday‘s the one who ordered my death.

She goggled at him for a moment. -Right now this is all speculation, so it‘s nothing I can use. I need proof of these connections, so we‘ll need to stay in touch. I‘m reachable on a sat phone, she said at length, and rattled off a string of numbers for him to memorize. He nodded, giving her the number of his own sat phone, and was about to break away when she said, — There‘s something else. DCI Hart has been killed by a car bomb. A man named M. Errol Danziger is the new DCI and he‘s already recalled me from the field.

— An order you‘re clearly refusing to obey. Good for you.

Soraya grimaced. -Who knows what kind of trouble it‘s going to get me into. She took his arm. -Jason, listen, this is the hardest part. For some reason Moira was with DCI Hart when the car bomb detonated. I know Moira survived the blast, because she checked herself into and out of an ER right afterward. But now she‘s gone completely off the grid. She squeezed his arm.

— I thought you‘d want to know.

She kissed him as he had kissed her moments before. As she walked back to the Egyptian, who had clearly become impatient at the delay, Bourne felt as if he had vacated his body. He seemed to be looking down on the three people on the tarmac as if from a great height. He saw Soraya say something to Chalthoum, saw the Egyptian nod, saw them both head toward a small military jet. He saw Tracy staring after them, an expression of both curiosity and consternation on her face; he saw himself standing apart, as still as if he had been suspended in amber. He observed all these things without a trace of emotion or awareness of consequence, flooded as he was by images of Moira in Bali with the sun in her eyes, turning them luminous, lambent, phosphorescent, unforgettable. It was as if in his memory he needed to protect her, or at least keep her safe from the dangers of the outside world. It was an absurd impulse, but, he told himself, a wholly human one. Where was she? How badly was she injured? And over all, the terrifying question loomed: Was the car bomb that killed Veronica Hart meant for Moira? Adding to his concern, when he‘d called, her number was out of service, which meant she‘d changed phones.

So deep had he sunk into himself that it was several moments before he realized that Tracy was talking to him. She stood facing him, her face a mask of concern.

— Adam, what‘s going on? Did your sister give you bad news?

— What? He was still slightly distracted by the swirl of emotions that had been loosed from his tight control. -Yes, she told me that yesterday our mother passed away unexpectedly.

— Oh, I‘m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?

His mouth smiled, though he remained far away. -That‘s very kind, but no. There‘s nothing anyone can do now.

M. Errol Danziger had a soul like an angry fist. From adolescence onward, he had made it his business to know everything there was to know about Muslims. He had studied the histories of Persia and the Arabian Peninsula; he spoke both Arabic and Farsi fluently, could recite entire sections of the Qur‘an by heart, as well as a multitude of Muslim prayers. He had absorbed the essential differences between Sunni and Shi‘a, and despised them both with equal fervor. For years now he had used his knowledge of the Middle East in the service of a destructive force against those who wished his country harm.

His intense-some believed obsessive-antipathy toward Muslims of all stripes might very well have stemmed from his high school years in the South, when a rumor that he harbored Syrian blood raced around the schoolyard, causing him to be the butt of endless jokes and taunting. Finally, inevitably, systematically, he was isolated, then ostracized, from social life. That the rumor was based on the truth-Danziger‘s paternal grandfather was of Syrian descent-made his misery complete.

He buried his curdled heart at precisely 8 AM when he took formal control of CI. He had still to appear on Capitol Hill, to be asked absurd and irrelevant questions by preening legislators looking to impress their constituents with probing questions fed them by their assistants. But that dog-and-pony show, Halliday had assured him, was a mere formality. The secretary of defense had amassed more than enough votes to push through his confirmation without a struggle or even much debate.

At precisely 8:05 AM he convened a meeting of the senior staff in the largest of the conference rooms at CI headquarters, an elongated oval without windows because glass was an excellent carrier of sound waves and an expert with field glasses trained on the room could read lips. Danziger was quite clear as to the attendees: the heads of the seven directorates, their immediate subordinates, and the chiefs of all the departments attached to the various directorates.

The spacious room was illuminated by indirect lights hidden by massive soffits built into the circumference of the ceiling. Specially designed and manufactured carpeting was so dense it absorbed nearly all sound, so that all those present were forced to focus their entire attention on whoever was speaking.

On this particular morning that was M. Errol Danziger, also known as the Arab, who, as he looked around the oval table, saw nothing but pale and anxious faces whose owners were still trying to digest the shocking news of his being anointed by the president as the next DCI. To a man-and of this he was quite certain-they had been expecting one of the seven, most likely Dick Symes, chief of intelligence and the most senior of the heads of the seven directorates, to be convening this meeting.