— So he‘ll listen to you, Marks said.
— I don‘t know about that — Willard‘s eyes twinkled- but he sure as hell won‘t turn me away.
There was a brass knocker in the shape of an elephant that Willard used to announce their presence.
— What is this place? Marks asked.
— You‘ll see soon enough. Just follow my lead and you‘ll be okay.
The door opened, revealing a young African American woman dressed in a fashionable business suit. She blinked once and said, — Freddy, is that really you?
Willard chuckled. -It‘s been a while, Reese, hasn‘t it?
— Years and years, the young woman said, a smile creasing her face.
— Well, don‘t just stand there, come on in. He‘s going to be tickled beige to see you.
— To fleece me, you mean.
Now it was the young woman‘s turn to chuckle, a warm, rich sound that seemed to caress the listener‘s ear.
— Reese, this is a friend of mine, Peter Marks.
The young woman stuck out her hand in a no-nonsense fashion. She had a rather square face with an aggressive chin and worldly eyes the color of bourbon. -Any friend of Freddy‘s… Her smile deepened. -Reese Williams.
— The commissioner‘s strong right hand, Willard supplied.
— Oh, yes. She laughed. -What would he do without me?
She led them down a softly lit, wood-paneled hallway, decorated with photos and watercolors of African wildlife, most predominantly elephants, with a smattering of rhinos, zebras, and giraffes thrown in.
They arrived soon after at double pocket doors, which Reese threw open to a blue cloud of aromatic cigar smoke, the discreet clink of glassware, and the fast-paced dealing of cards on a green baize table in the center of the library. Six men-including Commissioner Burrows-and one woman sat around the table, playing poker. All of them were high up in various departments of the district‘s political infrastructure. The ones Marks didn‘t know on sight, Willard identified for him.
As they stood on the threshold, Reese went ahead of them, crossing to the table, where Burrows sat, patiently playing his hand. She waited just behind his right shoulder until he‘d raked in the considerable pot, then leaned over and whispered in his ear.
At once the commissioner glanced up and a wide smile spread over his face. -Goddammit! he exclaimed, pushing his chair back and rising. -Well, wash my socks and call me Andy, if it isn‘t Freddy Fucking Willard! He strode over and engulfed Willard in a bear hug. He was a massive man with a bowling-ball head, who looked like an overstuffed sausage. His freckledappled cheeks belied the master manipulator‘s eyes and the pensive mouth of a seasoned politician.
Willard introduced Marks and the commissioner pumped his hand with that sinister warmth peculiar to people in public life, which flicks on and off with the quickness of a lightning strike.
— If you‘ve come to play, Burrows said, — you‘ve come to the right joint.
— Actually, we‘ve come to ask you about Detectives Sampson and Montgomery, Marks said impulsively.
The commissioner‘s brow pulled down, darkening into a furry mass. -Who are Sampson and Montgomery?
— With all due respect, sir, you know who they are.
— Son, are you some sort of psychic? Burrows turned on Willard. -Freddy, who the hell is he to tell me what I know?
— Ignore him, Lester. Willard inserted himself between Marks and the commissioner. -Peter‘s been a little on edge since he went off his medication.
— Well, get the man back on it, stat, Burrows said. -That mouth is a fucking menace.
— I will certainly do that, Willard said as he grabbed Marks to keep him out of the line of fire. -In the meantime, do you have room for one more at the table?
Noah Perlis, sitting in the lime-scented shade of the lavish rooftop garden at 779 El Gamhuria Avenue, could see all of Khartoum, smoky and indolent, laid out before him to his right, while to his left were the Blue and White Nile rivers that divided the city into thirds. In central Khartoum the hideous Chinese-built Friendship Hall, and the weird futuristic Al-Fateh building, so like the nose cone of an immense rocket, mixed uneasily with the traditional mosques and ancient pyramids of the city, but the unsettling juxtaposition was a sign of the times-hide-bound Muslim religion seeking its way in the alien modern world.
Perlis had his laptop open, the latest iteration of the Bardem program running the last of the scenarios: the incursion by Arkadin and his twentyman cadre into that section of Iran where, like Palestine, the milk and honey flowed, in the form of oil.
Perlis never did one thing when he could do two or, preferably, three at once. He was a man whose mind was so quick and restless that it needed a kind of internal web of goals, puzzles, and conjectures to keep from imploding into chaos. So while he studied the probabilities of Pinprick‘s end phase the program was spitting out he thought about the devil‘s deal he‘d been forced to make with Dimitri Maslov and, by extension, Leonid Arkadin. First and foremost, it galled him to partner with Russians, whose corruption and dissolute lifestyle he both loathed and envied. How could a bunch of scummy pigs like that be so awash in money? While it was true that life was never fair, he mused, sometimes it could be downright malevolent. But what could he do? He‘d tried many other routes but, in the end, Maslov had been the only way to get to Nikolai Yevsen, who felt about Americans the way he, Perlis, felt about Russians. Accordingly, he‘d been forced to make a deal with too many partners-too many partners for whom double dealing and backstabbing had been ingrained in their nature virtually from birth. Contingencies had to be made against the threat of such treachery, and that meant triple the planning and man-hours. Of course, it also meant he‘d been able to triple the fee he was charging Bud Halliday, not that the price meant anything to the secretary, the way the US Mint was printing up dollars as if they were confetti. In fact, at the last Black River board meeting, members of the steering committee were so concerned with the threat of hyperinflation that they had voted unanimously to convert their dollars into gold bullion for the next six months while they put their clients on notice that starting September 1, the company would accept fees only in gold or diamonds. What bothered him about that meeting was that Oliver Liss, one of the three founding members and the man he reported to, was absent.
Simultaneously, he was thinking of Moira. Like a cinder in his eye, she had become an irritant. She was firmly lodged in a corner of his mind ever since she had abruptly quit Black River and, after a short hiatus, had started her own company in direct competition with him. Because, make no mistake, Perlis had taken her defection and subsequent treachery personally. It hadn‘t been the first time, but he vowed to himself that it would be the last. The first time… well, there were good reasons not to think about the first time. He hadn‘t for years and he wasn‘t about to start now.
Besides, how else should he take actions that directly drained him of his best personnel? Like a jilted lover, he seethed for revenge, his longwithheld affection for her curdled into outright hatred-not only of her, but of himself. While she was under his control, he‘d played his cards too close to the vest-had, he had to admit bitterly, misplayed them altogether. And now she was gone, out of his control and in complete opposition to him. He took whatever solace he could salvage from the fact that her lover, Jason Bourne, was dead. He wished her only ill now, he wanted to see her not simply defeated but humiliated beyond redemption; nothing less would appease his appetite for vengeance.
When his satellite phone rang, he assumed it was Bud Halliday, giving him the signal to launch the final phase of Pinprick, but instead he discovered Humphry Bamber on the line.
— Bamber, he shouted, — where the hell are you?
— Back at my office, thank God. Bamber‘s voice sounded thin and metallic.
— I finally managed to escape because the woman Moira Something was too badly hurt in the explosion to hold on to me for long.
— I heard about
the explosion, Noah said truthfully, though of course he didn‘t add that he‘d ordered it to keep Veronica Hart and Moira from finding out about Bardem from Bamber. -Are you all right?
— Nothing a few days‘ rest won‘t cure, Bamber said, — but listen, Noah, there‘s a glitch in the version of Bardem you‘re running.
Noah stared out at the rivers, the beginning and the end of life in North Africa. -What kind of a glitch? If the program needs another security patch, forget it, I‘m almost finished using it.
— No, nothing like that. There‘s a calculation error; the program isn‘t producing accurate data.
Now Noah was alarmed. -How the hell did that happen, Bamber? I paid through the nose for this software and now you tell me that-
— Calm down, Noah, I‘ve already solved the internal error and corrected it. All I need to do now is to upload it to you, but you‘ll have to shut down all your programs.
— I know, I know, and Jesus, I ought to know the protocol by now considering how many versions of Bardem we‘ve been through.
— Noah, you have no idea how complex this program is-I mean, come on, literally millions of factors had to be incorporated into the software‘s architecture, and per your orders at the speed of light, too.
— Can it, Bamber. The last thing I need now is a lecture from you. Just get the fucking thing done. Perlis‘s fingers were running over his laptop‘s keyboard, shutting down programs. -Now, you‘re sure the latest parameters I‘ve loaded into the program will be there when I bring up the new version?
— Absolutely, Noah. That‘s why Bardem has one monster-size cache.
— Nothing better be missing, Noah said, and silently he added, Not at this late date. We’re almost at the finish line.
— Just let me know when you‘re ready, Bamber prompted.
All the programs were closed, but it took several minutes of going through one deliberately convoluted protocol after another until he exited the proprietary Black River security software. While this was happening, he muted his line with Bamber and dialed a number on a second satellite phone.
— Someone needs to be put to sleep, he said. -Yes, right away. Hold on and I‘ll transfer the particulars in a minute.
He unmuted the line with Bamber. -All set, he said.
— Then here we go!
26
KHARTOUM HAD about it the air of a disreputable mortuary. The sweet rot of death was everywhere, mingled with the sharp odor of gun barrels. Baleful shadows hid men smoking as they observed the night-lit street with the inscrutable look of a hunter searching for prey. Bourne and Tracy, in a jangling three-wheeled raksha, going at a hellish speed against traffic, rushed down avenues filled with donkey-pulled carts, wheezing minibuses, men in both traditional and Western dress, and vehicles belching blue smoke.
They were both tired and on edge-Bourne had had no luck contacting either Moira or Boris, and, despite what she‘d claimed, Tracy‘s experience in Seville seemed to have made her anxious about meeting Noah.
— I don‘t want to be caught napping when I walk in the door, she‘d said as they checked into a hotel in the main section of the city. -That‘s why I told Noah I wasn‘t coming over until tomorrow morning. Tonight I need a good night‘s sleep more than I need his money.
— What did he say?
They rode up in the mirrored elevator, heading for the top floor, which Tracy had requested.
— He wasn‘t happy, but what could he say?
— He didn‘t offer to come here?
Tracy‘s nose wrinkled. -No, he didn‘t.
Bourne thought that odd. If Noah was so anxious to take possession of the Goya, why wouldn‘t he offer to complete the transaction at the hotel?
They had adjoining rooms with nearly identical views of al Mogran-the junction of the Blue and White Nile rivers-and a connecting door that locked from either side. The White Nile flowed north from Lake Victoria, while the Blue Nile flowed west from Ethiopia. The Nile itself, the main river, continued north into Egypt.
The decor in the room was shabby. Judging by both the style and the wear, it certainly hadn‘t been updated since the early 1970s. The carpets stank of cheap cigarettes and even cheaper perfume. Putting the Goya on the bed, Tracy crossed directly to the window, unlocked it, and pushed it up as far as it would go. The rush of the city was like a vacuum, sucking all the hums out of the room.
She sighed as she returned to sit beside her prize. -I‘ve been traveling too much, I miss home.
— Where is that? Bourne asked. -I know it‘s not Seville.
— No, not Seville. She pushed her hair back off the side of her face. -I live in London, Belgravia.
— Very posh.
She laughed wearily. -If you saw my flat-it‘s a tiny thing, but it‘s mine and I love it. There‘s a mews out back with a flowering pear tree that a pair of house martins nest in come spring. And a nightjar serenades me most evenings.
— Why would you ever leave?
She laughed again, a bright, silvery sound that was easy on the ears. -I have to earn my way in the world, Adam, just like everyone else. Lacing her fingers together, she said more soberly, — Why did Don Hererra lie to you?
— There are many possible answers. Bourne stared out the window. The bright lights illuminated the bend in the Nile, reflections of the city dancing across the dark, crocodile-infested water. -But the most logical one is that he‘s somehow allied with the man I‘m trying to find, the one who shot me.
— Isn‘t that too much of a coincidence?
— It would be, he said, — if I wasn‘t being set up for a trap.
She seemed to digest this news for a moment. -Then the man who tried to kill you wants you to come to Seven Seventy-nine El Gamhuria Avenue.
— I believe so. He turned to her. -Which is why I‘m not going to be with you when you knock on the front door tomorrow morning.
Now she appeared alarmed. -I don‘t know whether I want to face Noah alone. Where are you going to be?
— My presence will only make things dangerous for you, believe me. He smiled. -Besides, I‘ll be there, I just won‘t go in through the front door.
— You mean you‘ll use me as a distraction.
She was not only uncommonly smart, Bourne thought, but quick as well. -I hope you don‘t mind.
— Not at all. And you‘re right, I will be safer if I go in alone. She frowned. -Why is it, I wonder, that people feel the need to lie altogether?
Her eyes found his. She seemed to be comparing him with someone else, or perhaps only with herself. -Would it be so terrible if everyone just told each other the truth?
— People prefer to remain hidden, he said, — so they won‘t get hurt.
— But they get hurt just the same, don‘t they? She shook her head. -I think people lie to themselves as easily as-if not more easily than-they do to others. Sometimes they don‘t even know they‘re doing it. She cocked her head to one side. -It‘s a matter of identity, isn‘t it? I mean, in your mind you can be anyone, do anything. Everything is malleable, whereas in the real world, effecting change-any change-is so bloody difficult, the effort is wearying, you get beaten down by all the outside forces you can‘t control.
— You could adopt an entirely new identity, Bourne said, — one where effecting change is less difficult because now you re-create your own history.
She nodded. -Yes, but that has it own pitfalls. No family, no friends-
unless, of course, you don‘t mind being absolutely isolated.
— Some people don‘t. Bourne looked beyond her, as if the wall with its cheap print of an Islamic scene was a window into his thoughts. Once again, he wondered who he was-David Webb, Jason Bourne, or Adam Stone. His life was a fiction, no matter in which direction he looked. He‘d already determined that he couldn‘t live as David Webb, and as for Jason Bourne, there was always someone, somewhere in the world, hidden in the shadows of his forgotten former life, who wished him ill or wanted him dead. And Adam Stone?
He might be called a blank slate, but that would be, in practice, untrue because the people who encountered this identity reacted to him-reacted to whoever the real Bourne was. The more he was with people like Tracy, the more he learned about himself.
— What about you? she said now as she joined him at the window. -Do you mind being alone?
— I‘m not alone, he replied. -I‘m with you.
She laughed softly and shook her head. -Listen to you, you‘ve perfected the art of answering personal questions without revealing one iota of yourself.
— That‘s because I never know who I‘m talking with.
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