The fourth-floor vestibule was clad entirely in cafe-au-lait marble. Frosted-glass sconces provided soft indirect lighting. As Khan picked himself up, he saw Annaka not five yards from him, fleeing down the hall. Clearly, she was surprised and, quite possibly, he thought, not a little frightened. Obviously, neither she nor Spalko had counted on him making it to the fourth floor. He laughed silently as he set off in pursuit. He couldn't blame them; it was quite a feat he'd performed.
Up ahead, Annaka went through a door. As she slammed it shut behind her, Khan heard the lock click into place. He knew he needed to get to Bourne and Spalko, but Annaka had become a wild card he couldn't afford to ignore. He had a set of picks out even as he reached the locked door. Inserting one, he finessed out the grooves of the tumbler. It took him less than fifteen seconds to open the door, hardly time enough for Annaka to have made it to the other side of the room. She threw him a frightened glance over her shoulder before she slammed the door shut behind her.
In retrospect, he should have been warned by her expression. Annaka never showed fear. He was, however, alerted by the ominous room, which was small and square, as featureless as it was windowless. It appeared unfinished, freshly painted a dead white, even the wide, carved moldings. There was no furniture, nothing at all in the space. But his alarm arrived too late, for the soft hiss had already begun. Peering up, he saw the vents high in the walls, from which a gas was being discharged. Holding his breath, he went to the far door. He picked the lock, but still the door wouldn't open. It must be bolted from the outside, he thought, as he ran back to the door through which he'd entered the room. He turned the knob only to find that it, too, had been bolted from the outside. The gas was starting to permeate the barred room. He was neatly trapped.
Next to the crumb-spattered bone china plate and the stemmed glass in which remained the dregs of the Bordeaux, Stepan Spalko had arrayed the items he had taken from Bourne: the ceramic gun, Conklin's cell phone, the wad of money and the switchblade knife.
Bourne, battered and bloody, had been deep in delta meditation for hours now, first to survive the waves of agony that had rippled through his body at every new twist and jab of Spalko's implements, then to protect and conserve his inner core of energy, and finally to throw off the debilitating effects of the torture and to build up his strength. Thoughts of Marie, Alison and Jamie flickered through his emptied mind like fitful flames, but what had come to him most vividly was his years in sun-drenched Phnom Penh. His mind, calmed to the point of complete tranquility, resurrected Dao, Alyssa and Joshua. He was tossing a baseball to Joshua, showing him how to use the glove he'd brought from the States, when Joshua turned to him and said, "Why did you try to replicate us? Why didn't you save us?" He became confused for a moment, until he saw Khan's face hanging in his mind like a full moon in a starless sky. Khan opened his mouth and said, "You tried to replicate Joshua and Alyssa. You even used the same first letters in their names."
He wanted to rise out of his enforced meditation, to abandon the fortress he'd erected to protect himself against the worst of the ravages Spalko was visiting upon him, anything to get away from the accusatory face, the crushing guilt. Guilt.
It was his own guilt that he'd been running away from. Ever since Khan had told him who he really was, he'd run from the truth, just as he'd run from Phnom Penh as fast as he could. He thought he'd been running away from the tragedy that had befallen him, but the truth was he'd run from the burden of his unsupportable guilt. He hadn't been there to protect his family when they'd needed him the most. Slamming the door on the truth, he'd fled.
God help him, in this he was, as Annaka had said, a coward.
As Bourne's watched out of bloodshot eyes, Spalko pocketed the money and took up the gun. "I've used you to keep the hounds of the world's intelligence organizations off my trail. In this you've served me well." He leveled the gun at Bourne, aiming for a spot just above and between his eyes. "But, sadly, your use to me is at an end." His finger tightened on the trigger.
At that moment Annaka came into the room. "Khan made it onto the floor," she said. Despite himself, Spalko registered surprise. "I heard the explosion. He wasn't killed by it?"
"He somehow managed to crash the elevator. It exploded in the sub-basement."
"Luckily, the latest delivery of weapons was shipped out." At last he turned his gaze on her. "Where's Khan now?"
"He's trapped in the locked room. It's time to leave." Spalko nodded. She'd been dead on when it came to Khan's skills. He'd been right to encourage the liaison between them. Duplicitous creature that she was, she's gotten to know Khan better than he himself could've hoped to. Still, he stared at Bourne, certain his business with him was not yet finished.
"Stepan." Annaka put a hand on his arm. "The plane is waiting. We need time to leave the building unseen. The fire-circuits have been activated and all the oxygen has been pumped out of the elevator shaft so there's no chance of major damage. Still, there must be flames in the lobby and the fire wagons will be here if they're not already." She'd thought of everything. Spalko looked at her admiringly. Then, without any warning, he swept the hand that held Bourne's ceramic gun in an arc, slamming the barrel into the side of Bourne's head.
"I'll just take this as a souvenir of our first and last encounter." Then he and Annaka left the room.
Khan, down on his belly, dug furiously, using a small crowbar from the tools he'd requested from Oszkar, at a section of the molding. His eyes burned and teared from the gas, and his lungs were near to bursting from lack of oxygen. He had only a few more seconds left before he passed out and his autonomous nervous system took over, allowing the gas into his system.
But now he'd pried off a section of the molding and immediately he could feel the draft of cool air coming from outside the room he was in. He stuck his nose into the vent he'd made, breathed in the fresh air. Then, taking a deep breath, he quickly set up the small charge of C4 Oszkar had provided. This, above all the items on his list, had told Oszkar the extent of the danger he was heading into, prompting the contact to give Khan the escape kit as added protection.
Putting his nose into the vent, Khan took another deep breath, then he replaced it with the packet of C4, wedging it as far in as he was able. Scrambling to the opposite side of the room, he pressed the remote.
The resulting explosion brought down a section of the wall as it blew a hole right through it. Without waiting for the plastic and wood dust to settle, Khan leaped though the wall into Stepan Spalko's bedroom.
Sunlight slanted through the windows, and the Danube glittered below. Khan threw open all the windows in order to dissipate whatever leakage of gas found its way in. At once he could hear sirens, and glancing down, he saw the fire trucks and the police cars, the frenzied activity on street level. He stepped back from the windows, looked around, orienting himself to the architectural plans Hearn had brought up on his computer screen. He turned to where the blank space had been, saw the gleaming wooden wall panels. Pressing his ear to each panel in turn, he rapped with his knuckles. In this way the third panel from the left revealed itself as a door. He pressed against the left side of the panel and it swung inward.
Khan stepped into the room of black concrete and white tiles. It stank of sweat and blood. He found himself facing a bloody, battered Jason Bourne. He stared at Bourne, strapped into the dentist's chair, blood spatters in a circle around him. Bourne was bare to the waist. His arms, shoulders, chest and back were a welter of puffy wounds and blistered flesh. The two outer layers that wrapped his ribs had been stripped away, but the underlayer was still intact.
Bourne's head swung around and regarded Khan with the look of a wounded bull, bloody but unbowed.
"I heard the second explosion," Bourne said, in a reedy voice. "I thought you had been killed."
"Disappointed?" Khan bared his teeth. "Where is he? Where's Spalko?"
"I'm afraid you're too late on that score," Bourne said. "He's gone, and Annaka Vadas with him
."
"She was working for him all along," Khan said. "I tried to warn you at the clinic, but you didn't want to listen."
Bourne sighed, closed his eyes against the sharp rebuke. "I didn't have time."
"You never seem to have time to listen."
Khan approached Bourne. His throat seemed constricted. He knew that he should go after Spalko, but something rooted him to the spot. He stared at the damage Spalko had wrought.
Bourne said, "Will you kill me now." It was not a question, more a statement of fact. Khan knew that he would never have a better chance. The dark thing inside him that he had nurtured, that had become his only companion, which daily feasted on his hate, and which daily had spewed its poison back out into his system, refused to die. It wanted to kill Bourne, and it almost took possession of him then. Almost. He felt the impulse coming up from his lower belly into his arm, but it had bypassed his heart and so fell short of impelling him to action.
Abruptly, he turned on his heel and went back into Spalko's luxe bedroom. In a moment he'd returned with a glass of water and a handful of items he'd scavenged from the bathroom. He held the glass to Bourne's mouth, tipping it slowly until it had been drained. As if of their own volition, his hands unstrapped the buckles, freeing Bourne's wrists and ankles.
Bourne's eyes watched him as he went about cleaning and disinfecting the wounds. Bourne didn't lift his hands from the arms of the chair. In a sense, he felt more completely paralyzed now than he had while restrained. He stared hard at Khan, scrutinizing every curve and angle, every feature of his face. Did he see Dao's mouth, his own nose? Or was it all an illusion? If this was his son, he needed to know; he needed to understand what had happened. But he still felt an undercurrent of uncertainty, a ripple of fear. The possibility that he was confronting his own son after so many years of believing him dead was too much for him. On the other hand, the silence into which they had now been plunged was intolerable. And so he fell back to the one neutral topic he knew was of extreme interest to both of them. "You wanted to know what Spalko was up to," he said, breathing slowly and deeply as each shock of the disinfectant sent bolts of pain through him. "He's stolen a weapon invented by Felix Schiffer—a portable bio-diffuser. Somehow Spalko has coerced Peter Sido—an epidemiologist working at the clinic—to provide him with the payload."
Khan dropped the blood-soaked piece of gauze, picked up a clean one. "Which is?"
"Anthrax, a designer hemorrhagic fever, I don't know. The only thing for certain is that it's quite lethal."
Khan continued to clean Bourne's wounds. The floor was now littered with bloody bits of gauze. "Why are you telling me this now?" he said with undisguised suspicion.
"Because I know what Spalko means to do with this weapon." Khan looked up from his work.
Bourne found it physically painful to look into Khan's eyes. Taking a deep breath, he plowed on. "Spalko's on a very tight time constraint. He needed to get moving now."
"The terrorism summit in Reykjavik."
Bourne nodded. "It's the only possibility that makes sense." Khan stood up, rinsing off his hands at the hose. He watched the pink water swirl through the huge grate. "That is, if I believe you."
"I'm going after them," Bourne said. "After putting the pieces together, I finally realized that Conklin had taken Schiffer and hidden him with Vadas and Molnar because he'd learned of Spalko's threat. I got the code name for the bio-diffuser—NX 20—from a pad in Conklin's house."
"And so Conklin was murdered for it." Khan nodded. "Why didn't he go to the Agency with his information? Surely, the CIA as a whole would've been better equipped to handle the threat to Dr. Schiffer."
"There could be many reasons," Bourne said. "He didn't think he'd be believed, given Spalko's reputation as a humanitarian. He didn't have enough time; his intel wasn't concrete enough for the Agency's bureaucracy to move on it quickly enough. Also, it wasn't Alex's way. He hated sharing secrets."
Bourne rose slowly and painfully, one hand supporting himself on the back of the chair. His legs felt like rubber from having been in one position for so long. "Spalko killed Schiffer, and I have to assume that he has Dr. Sido, alive or dead. I've got to stop him from killing everyone at the summit."
Khan turned and handed Bourne the cell phone. "Here. Call the Agency."
"Do you think they'd believe me? As far as the Agency's concerned, I murdered Conklin and Panov in the house in Manassas."
"I'll do it then. Even the bureaucracy of the CIA has to take seriously an anonymous call that threatens the life of the president of the United States." Bourne shook his head. "The head of American security is a man named Jamie Hull. He'd be sure to find a way to screw up the intel." His eyes gleamed. They'd already lost most of their dullness. "That leaves only one other option, but I don't think I can do it alone."
"Judging by the look of you," Khan said, "you can't do it at all." Bourne forced himself to look Khan in the eye. "All the more reason, then, for you to join me."
"You're insane!"
Bourne inured himself to the rising hostility. "You want Spalko as badly as I do. Where's the downside?"
"All I see is downside." Khan sneered. "Look at you! You're a mess." Bourne had detached himself from the chair and was walking around the room, stretching his muscles, gaining strength and confidence in his body with every stride he took. Khan saw this and was, frankly, astonished.
Bourne turned to him and said, "I promise not to make you do all the heavy lifting." Khan didn't reject the offer out of hand. Instead, he made a grudging concession, not at all certain why he was doing it. "The first thing we have to do is get out of here safely."
"I know," Bourne said, "you managed to start a fire and now the building is swarming with firemen and, no doubt, the police."
"I wouldn't be here if I hadn't started that fire."
Bourne could see that his light bantering wasn't easing the tension. If anything, it was doing the opposite. They didn't know how to talk to each other. He wondered whether they ever would. "Thank you for rescuing me," he said. Khan wouldn't meet his eye. "Don't flatter yourself. I came here to kill Spalko."
"At last," Bourne said, "something to thank Stepan Spalko for." Khan shook his head. "This can't work. I don't trust you and I know you don't trust me."
"I'm willing to try," Bourne said. "Whatever's between us, this is far bigger."
"Don't tell me what to think," Khan said shortly. "I don't need you for that; I never did." He managed to raise his head and look at Bourne. "All right, here's how it goes. I'll agree to work together with you on one condition. You find us a way out of here."
"Done." Bourne's smile confounded Khan. "Unlike you, I've had a great many hours to think about escaping from this room. I had assumed that even if I somehow managed to free myself from the chair, I wouldn't get far using conventional methods. At the time I was quite unable to go up against a squadron of Spalko's guards. So I came up with another solution."
Khan's expression registered annoyance. He hated that this man knew more than he did.
"Which is?"
Bourne nodded in the direction of the grate.
"The drain?" Khan said incredulously.
"Why not?" Bourne knelt beside the grate. "The diameter is large enough to get through." He gestured as he snapped open the switchblade and inserted the blade between the grate and its flush housing. "Why don't you give me a hand?" As Khan knelt on the opposite side of the grate, Bourne used the knifeblade to raise it slightly. Khan lifted it up. Putting aside the switchblade, Bourne joined him and, together, they heaved the grate all the way up.
Khan could see Bourne wince with the effort. At that moment an eerie sensation rose in him, both strange and familiar, a kind of pride he was able to identify only at length and with considerable pain. It was an emotion he'd felt when he was a boy, before he'd wandered in shock, lost and abandoned, out of Phnom Penh. Since then, he'd so successfully walled it off that it hadn't been a problem for him. Until now.
They rolled the grate aside and Bourne took up some of the bloody bandage that Spalko had ripped off him and wrapped his cell phone. Then he put it and the closed switchblade in his pocket. "Who'll go first?" he asked. Khan shrugged, giving no sign that he was in any way impressed. He had a good idea where the drain led, and he believed Bourne did, too. "It's your idea." Bourne levered himself into the circular hole. "Wait ten seconds, then follow me down," he said just before he vanished from sight.
Annaka was elated. As they sped toward the airport in Spalko's armor-plated limousine, she knew no one and nothing could stop them. Her last-minute ploy with Ethan Hearn hadn't been necessary, as it turned out, but she didn't regret the overture. It always paid to err on the side of caution, and at the time she'd decided to confront Hearn, Spalko's fate seemed to have hung in the balance. Looking over at him now, she knew that she never should have doubted him. He had the courage, skills and worldwide resources to pull off anything, even this audacious power coup. She had to admit that when he'd first told her what he planned, she'd been skeptical, and she'd remained so until he had engineered their successful emergence on the other side of the Danube through an old air-raid tunnel he'd discovered when he'd bought the building. When he'd started to renovate it, he'd successfully erased any notation of it from the architectural plans so that it remained, up until the moment he'd shown it to her, his personal secret.
The limo and driver had been waiting for them on the far side in the fiery glow of the late afternoon sunshine, and now they were speeding along the motorway toward Ferihegy Airport. She moved closer to Stepan, and when his charismatic face turned toward her, she took his hand briefly in hers. He'd stripped off the bloody butcher's apron and the Latex gloves somewhere in the tunnel. He wore jeans, a crisp white shirt and loafers. You'd never know he'd been up all night.
Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy Page 43
